Sweet Potatoes as Medicine

We Americans have an expression: If you give a person a fish, they will eat for
a day. If you teach a person to fish, they can eat for a lifetime.
One way to explain this is that helping people grow their own food is a better
way to fight hunger. That is the purpose of an agricultural research
organization called Harvest Plus.
HarvestPlus is teaching people around the world how to grow what it callssmart crops.
Its project in Mozambique is having surprising effects.
In 2006, HarvestPlus workers provided orange sweetpotato plants to people in
24 Mozambique villages.
Theworkers taught these people how to grow thevegetables. They also explained the import
ance ofVitamin A to staying healthy.
Farmers in Mozambique had been planting white and yellow sweet potatoes, not
the orange-colored ones.
The white and yellow potatoes have very little VitaminA. However, one small, orange sweet
potato has a full days supply of Vitamin A.
A lack of Vitamin A
is dangerous. Without enough Vitamin A, you face anincreased risk of getting a serious dise
ase or dying from infections.
Around the world, 190 million young children are not getting enough of this
important vitamin in the foods they eat. That number comes from the World
Health Organization.
Economist Alan de Brauw is with the International Food Policy ResearchInstitute.
He talks about the Harvest Plus project in Mozambique.
He saysabout 70 percent of children there were Vitamin A deficient. They were notgetting e
nough Vitamin A.

About 70 percent of kids under the age of five were vitamin A deficient. So,
you have this huge need for new solutions. If you can do something throughagriculture to in
crease the amount of vitamin in the diet youre in much
better shape because thats much more sustainable.
Mar. de Braun says the potatoes had a surprising effect on the health of children. At
the end of the three-year study,
the researchers compared thehealth of children in villages growing orange sweet potatoes
with those notgrowing them.
Children living in the sweet potato villages had
40 percent fewer cases ofdiarrhea than other boys and girls. Among children under the age
of three, the difference was 50 percent. According to Mr de Brauw showing the impact of
a food-growing project on health is very important, or as he says, a big deal.
This is a big deal because nobody has shown in the past that
an agricultural production intervention canhave big health impacts have had any healthi
mpacts.
Nutrition experts say vitamin supplements that is,
fluids or pills you take in addition to normal meals -- canonly do so much. One expert goes s
o far to say thatsupplements are a Band-Aid -- a short-term fix to a long-term problem.
Anne her forth is an expert on global food security and nutrition. She was not part of
this study but talked about it with VOAs SteveBaragona on Skype.
Its sort of a Band-Aid solution to
a more fundamental problem, which ispeople not having access to high-quality diets.
Experts are suggesting that linking agriculture and health issues is
a naturaland effective partnership. They say teaching farmers how to grow healthierfood is
among the best ways to improve health.
Ms. Herfoth says the findings do a good job making thelink between food production and he
alth.
To say, You know, look, you produce a food and
itsavailable to people to eat and they like it,' then it doesgood things for health.

Harvest Plus is now helping farmers in other countries. In India,

the group is helping farmers grow iron-rich millet. And in Bangladesh, it
is helping farmers grow high-zinc rice.
Mr de Brauw helped to write a report on the Harvest plus project. The report appeared in
the journal World Development.
Source: http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/sweaet-potatoes-asmedicine/2841957.html