Access, Adoption, and Diffusion: Understanding the Long-term Impacts of Improved Vegetable and Fish Technologies in Bangladesh

Malnutrition continues to be a serious problem in Bangladesh. In 1996–1997, households were surveyed in three sites to examine the effects of the adoption (two years prior) of new vegetable varieties and polyculture fishpond management technologies on household resource allocation, income, and nutrition. The same households were reinterviewed in 2006–2007. This paper examines the long-term impacts of the initiatives on household and individual well-being. It assesses the success of the project in reaching the key objective of improving the micronutrient consumption, particularly of women and children. It also considers factors (gender and other) that underlie the differential impacts of the interventions household- and individual-level outcomes. 

 Key findings to emerge in the paper include:

• In general the impact of nutrient availability from the vegetables sites at the individual level were significant, for example, increases in vitamin A consumption (and iron consumption for men), an increase in average weight-for-age among children, and a reduction in the proportion of girls stunted and the proportion of boys underweight. Women in the improved vegetable programme also experienced increases in body mass index (BMI) 
• Impacts in the group-operated fishponds sites included improved nutrient availability and daily  intake among men and women, a negative impact on height-for-age among children and an increase in the proportion of children stunted (primarily girls), however weight-for-age did increase, leading to a fall in the proportion of underweight girls. Among adults, the fraction of women with low haemoglobin levels decrease significantly.
• Significant improvements in nutritional status (the longer term outcome of nutrient availability and intake) were expected in the individually operated fishponds sites, yet impacts on nutritional status were mixed. This is because such impacts are mediated by a host of other factors, including level of activity (work effort), underlying health conditions (illness), and, for women, pregnancy and lactation status.

The paper concludes that tracing the impact of agricultural technologies on household incomes and individual well-being is a complicated process that is mediated by several factors:

• Differences in dissemination and targeting mechanisms that may affect what types of households adopt and benefit from the technologies
• The degree to which a technology is divisible and easily disseminated outside the treatment group (easier for improved vegetables, more difficult for fishponds, which require lumpy investments)
• Intrahousehold allocation processes, which determine how gains from the new technology are allocated among household members