At the 2019 Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (ANH) Academy Week in Hyderabad, India, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) introduced Agrifood—a novel modelling tool designed to support evidence-based decision-making in nutrition-sensitive agricultural programming.

Led by Dr. Elaine Ferguson and Frances Knight from LSHTM’s Nutrition Group, the Agrifood team delivered both a conference presentation and an interactive learning lab to demonstrate how the tool can help users explore the nutritional, agricultural, environmental, and social trade-offs of promoting different foods in agricultural interventions.

The conference presentation shared findings from early development work, including consultations with over 60 agriculture–nutrition stakeholders and a pilot application of the tool in Mozambique. The beta version of the tool incorporated 10 key decision criteria, such as nutritional value, input costs, environmental demands, and gender implications, allowing users to visualise and compare the practical outcomes of promoting different foods in a specific context.

Agrifood aims to support users—whether from agricultural or nutrition backgrounds—to make more transparent, inclusive and evidence-informed decisions that lead to better dietary outcomes while remaining grounded in local realities.

The learning lab offered participants a hands-on opportunity to simulate real-world decision-making using a case study. Working in small groups, participants took on the roles of various stakeholders—such as health workers, agriculture extension officers, and environmental staff—to assign value weightings to different decision criteria. They then used the Agrifood beta tool to assess and compare food combinations based on those priorities.

“This fills a real gap—we often have the data, but not the structure to make decisions together.”

Learning lab participant

Participants explored questions such as:
– Which foods or food combinations should be promoted to improve diet quality?
– What are the implications for agricultural systems?
– How can programmes manage trade-offs when designing food-based recommendations?
The session sparked thoughtful conversation on how cross-sector decision-making can be strengthened through tools like Agrifood