Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 23 November 2018 to Question 201561, what support her Department provides to the private sector to help make safe nutritious foods more affordable and accessible to (a) women, (b) adolescent girls, (c) children under five and (d) other poor people.

DFID supports private sector innovation and investment in value chains and markets for nutritious foods. This is done both by offering businesses technical assistance and access to finance for investments, and by working to remove inefficiencies in agri-food value chains. Alongside this, DFID funds research and development of nutritious crops and agricultural technologies and supports their commercial scale-up. DFID also works to strengthen the enabling environment to make it more conducive for companies to invest in nutritious foods and associated inputs, technologies and services.

In addition, DFID supports accountability mechanisms like the Access to Nutrition Index and the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network to further incentivise more responsible business action on nutrition. DFID’s work in this area gives priority to improving nutrition outcomes for women, adolescents, children under five and other poor people, as set out in the Nutrition Position paper https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652122/nutrition-paper-2017a.pdf