Agricultural development interventions on household nutrition in Kenya and Uganda

Decision-based Bayesian Networks (BN) were developed to generate plausible estimates of annual food and nutrition contributions of planting fruit trees in Kenya and transitioning from homegardens to large-scale commercial agriculture in Uganda. Participatory workshops were held with a diversity of local experts and academics. Facilitators used group-work techniques to include the knowledge of all participants and collectively aim for consensus. Results of the BN models indicate that planting fruit trees in Kenya will have a positive impact on nutrition and food security. However, the model developed in Uganda shows a high probability that the nutrition status of households will be negatively affected by the planned agricultural development in Uganda’s National Development plan. References Fenton, N., and Neil, M., 2012. Risk assessment and decision analysis with Bayesian networks. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida.Hubbard, D. W., 2014. How To Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.Luedeling, E., and Shepherd, K., 2016. Decision-Focused Agricultural Research, Solutions, 46-54.Luedeling, E., Oord, A. L., Kiteme, B., Ogalleh, S., Malesu, M., Shepherd, K. D., and De Leeuw, J., 2015. Fresh groundwater for Wajir - ex-ante assessment of uncertain benefits for multiple stakeholders in a water supply project in Northern Kenya, Front. Environ. Sci., 3, 241.