Nutrition Sensitive Value Chain
Nutrition-sensitive value chain NSVCs aim to address nutrition problems, primarily diet quality, affordability, and availability. NSVCs consider the economic value and value from a nutrition point of view, observing the added value with a nutrition lens. The nutrition value chain encompasses investments at different stages along the value chain, from production to consumption. In a standard value chain, “value” refers to economic value with little or no consideration of nutritional value. Such value addition can even be harmful. For example, such value-added products are highly processed foods. In the Nutrition-Sensitive Value Chain framework, on the other hand, the term “nutrition value” refers to the value that is relevant for nutrition, such as nutritional value or value that arises from food safety or food loss and waste.
NSVC alleviates constraints in the supply and demand of specific foods, changing the food systems. NSVC helps diversify nutritious foods by making them more affordable, available, safe, and acceptable.
Nutrition-sensitive value chain framework aims to make the value chains themselves more nutrition-sensitive – that is, to leverage the potential of VCs and markets to improve nutrition.