Meet an Alum - Jessica Agnew
During the week of the pre-summit of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (July 26-28), there was clear consensus for radically changing the way we plan and structure our food systems in order to eliminate hunger, improve nutrition (of people, animals, and planet), and mitigate impacts of climate and conflict. Upending the business-as-usual approach to creating access to safe and affordable nutritious food for all is something I think a lot about. How do we move the needle on reducing micronutrient deficiencies in low- and middle-income countries? How can innovative technologies be used in food supply chains to improve transparency and trust and produce benefits for producers and consumers? How do we ensure changes are equitable and truly serve the needs of those we are trying to help? How can we create a model for a university-driven food system that ensures all students are food secure? These are the types of questions that drive my work and collaborations with equally committed colleagues and partners.
For the past 10 years, I have been researching how businesses can make nutritious foods more available, affordable, and acceptable to low-income consumers in low- and middle-income countries. For my dissertation research, I wanted to learn from consumers themselves if this so-called “market-based approach to nutrition” is feasible from their perspective and, if so, in what way would they be able to increase the diversity of their diet through food purchases and the local market. I also wanted to know what the existing willingness to pay for diet diversity might be. In the field of international nutrition and food systems planning, the assumptions we make about why malnutrition exists need to be continually challenged in order to design the most impactful solutions. To do this, I used a combination of approaches from the fields of economics, public health, and planning to collect qualitative and quantitative data to paint a rich picture of the possibility for food markets to contribute to improved nutrition in Mozambique. Working collaboratively with a local university, Universidade Lúrio, and my advisor at the time, Ralph Hall, we learned that even low-income households are able to change the foods they purchase in order to improve diet diversity. Moreover, there is already an existing willingness to pay for diet diversity, though there is a need for improved education and support as households change their diets to improve nutrition.
There is also a need to look throughout supply chains for nutritious foods; we need to identify ways to increase the affordability and availability of nutritious foods by improving how the entire system functions. On the recommendation of one of my PhD committee members, David Bieri, I started looking into how blockchain technology might play such a role. Working together with AgUnity, the Australian private sector company that has built a smartphone app on blockchain; Egerton University in western Kenya; and Dr. Hall (SPIA), we won a research award via the LASER PULSE project led by Purdue University to investigate how blockchain might contribute to improvements in food security. We learned that disruptive innovations will provide smallholder farmers game-changing access to resources and information. In doing so, production can start to match the demand for the types of foods and agricultural products needed for a productive and healthy life for all.
Difficulty in accessing safe and nutritious foods does not just exist in low- and middle-income countries, but right outside our front door. Approximately, one in three students at Virginia Tech experience either low or very low food security. Since 2017, I have been working with Dr. Hall and others at Virginia Tech to understand the barriers that Virginia Tech students face in accessing the food they need for mental, physical, and social health. I have had the privilege of using data to advocate for this largely hidden issue and working with amazing teams across campus to start The Market at Virginia Tech.
While food systems planning is a lesser represented discipline in the Planning, Governance, and Globalization doctoral program, the interdisciplinary nature of the program and SPIA more generally helped me to cultivate the skills, understand the value for innovative approaches, and use frameworks for understanding how solutions to complex challenges can be developed and implemented in practice not just in theory.
About Jessica Agnew, Ph.D.
Planning, Governance, and Globalization (PGG) alumna, Jessica Agnew (www.jessicalagnew.com), has six years of experience working in market-based approaches to nutrition and food security in an international context. Her research and on-the-ground experience has involved improving the competitiveness and commercial viability of small- and medium-sized enterprises that sell nutritious foods to low-income populations, as well as identifying ways that the market can contribute to improvements in nutritional status more generally. Agnew has published articles in the Food and Nutrition Bulletin and Development Policy Review that advance the knowledge base of this emerging area of addressing food and nutrition security in low- and middle-income countries. Agnew’s research interests also pertain to the business-enabling environment, policy, and planning systems that will promote private-sector engagement in food security and nutrition as well as other important sectors with the potential to create positive outcomes for low-income households globally.
In 2017, Agnew developed the BUY2THRIVE initiative that aims to connect consumers to markets for nutrition. In July 2019, the first B2T project was implemented in Mozambique in partnership with UniLúrio in the city of Nampula. In June 2020, Agnew and Dr. Ralph Hall, Associate Professor and Assistant Director, School of Public and International Affairs, won an award to conduct research in using blockchain technology in value chains for African indigenous vegetables in Kenya to advance food and nutrition security. Agnew is also currently serving on the Virginia Tech Food Access and Security working group to address food security on campus in Blacksburg.