The research led by Emilie Vansant and Charlotte Hall as part of our FORESTDIET project has showed that trees can support people’s nutrition in Malawi. This is because trees are an important source of fruits, nuts, seeds, and leaves. Yet despite the rising number of tree planting initiatives in Malawi, many indigenous tree species are still threatened by landscape degradation. This begs the question…

🌳 How can we harness all of this momentum around tree planting to support both indigenous biodiversity and better quality diets? 🌳

This past week, we brought together representatives from over 25 Malawian government and civil society organizations engaged in tree planting projects to tackle this important question.

Together with illustrator/graphic facilitator Mette Jeppesen, we led lively workshops for experts to connect and exchange knowledge around tree planting and landscape restoration. In particular, we discussed challenges and opportunities for protecting and propagating indigenous species – especially those with nutritious foods.

To launch this dialogue, we presented our brand new guidebook, “My Guide to Tree Planting, Featuring Indigenous Edible Species of Malawi”!

The development of the guide was led by Emilie Vansant as part of the TREETOOL project. It was created in close collaboration with Malawian botanists, foresters, and agroecologists. The guide provides technical information that is up-to-date, context-specific, and accessible to non-experts. It includes:

📗 Botanical descriptions of 24 indigenous tree species that provide nutritious foods in Malawi.

📙 A seasonal calendar to track flowering, fruiting, and seed collection phases for these species.

📘 A step-by-step guide to seed procurement, nursery management, and outplanting.

By placing this guide in the hands of practitioners working with farming communities, we aim to broaden the conversation around tree planting to include considerations beyond carbon – and encourage biodiversity stewardship for better nutrition🍊

Thank you to all of our wonderful workshop participants and especially our hosts: Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities (SFHC) and Permaculture Paradise Institute.

We used panel data covering a 10-year period from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) to examine the effects of trees on farms on people’s dietary quality in rural Malawi. We found that having on-farm trees leads to higher and more diverse fruit and vegetable consumption. 

Coefficient plots summarizing the regression outputs for models run between trees on farm (binary and species count) and fruit and vegetable consumption (grams per adult male equivalent [AME] per day and diversity of consumption) over the study period (2010–2020) (†<0.1; *<0.05; **<0.01; ***<0.001). Abbreviations: TOF, Trees on Farm; Veg, vegetable.

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We assess whether tropical tree plantation expansion and forest regrowth across 18 African countries are associated with local people’s living standards. By combining a recent map that distinguishes tree plantations from regrowth from 2000 to 2012 with multidimensional poverty measures from more than 200,000 households, we find a positive association between people’s living standards and areas where tree plantations have expanded or, to a lesser extent, forest regrowth has occurred.

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By Emilie Vansant

I am so excited to share at last some of the results from my PhD research on land use and nutrition, published today in Nature Food – Open Access! Here, we show how sourcing food from on-farm trees can benefit people’s diets in rural Malawi.

In countries like Malawi, where most rural households rely on rain-fed agriculture, people’s diets can depend on what crops they grow. Yet, policies designed to improve food security often focus on increasing the productivity of calorie-rich staple grains, which have done little to address the country’s high rates of malnutrition (as far more people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies than hunger).

Trees are an important source of nutrient-dense foods, yet if and how they can support dietary quality remains poorly understood. Through linking tree cover estimates from high-resolution satellite imagery with detailed food consumption data in Malawi, our research evidences how sourcing food directly from trees on farms can support women’s micronutrient adequacy across dry and wet seasons.

For example: Compared to women without food trees, women who sourced food from their own trees had on average 8-15% higher levels of zinc, vitamin A, iron and folate adequacy in the dry season, and 6-12% higher levels of zinc, vitamin A and folate adequacy in the wet season.

To tackle the interconnected problems of climate change, food insecurity, and biodiversity loss, we need solutions that address environmental and human health in tandem. It is clear that trees can and must play a role in such solutions.

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Together with Prof. Ingo Grass from the University of Hohenheim in Germany – and 57 co-authors, we examined the effects of agricultural diversification strategies on both environmental and social outcomes. We did so by harmonizing data from 24 studies across 11 countries. We found that farmers who implemented multiple diversification strategies in tandem had more win-win outcomes.

We examine the empirical relationship between having forests and trees in the surroundings and the probability of children consuming nutritious foods. We do so by combining detailed tree cover estimates based on PlanetScope imagery (3 m resolution) with Demographic Health Survey data from >15,000 households.

We find that even low levels of tree cover improve the likelihood of children aged 12–59 months consuming vitamin A–rich foods. Moreover, we observe that the effects of tree cover vary across poverty levels and ecoregions. The poor are more likely than the non-poor to consume vitamin A–rich foods at low levels of tree cover in the lowland forest-savanna ecoregions, whereas the difference between poor and non-poor is less pronounced in the Sahel-Sudan. These results highlight the importance of trees and forests in sustainable food system transformation, even in areas with sparse tree cover.

Even low levels of tree cover improve dietary quality in West Africa

Abstract. Forests are attracting attention as a promising avenue to provide nutritious and “free” food without damaging the environment. Yet, we lack knowledge

We show how forest regrowth in Nigeria has affected people’s dietary quality. We do so by combining a new map on forest regrowth with food consumption panel data from over 1100 households.

We use a a combination of regression and weighting analyses to generate quasi-experimental quantitative estimates of the impacts of forest regrowth on people’s food intake. We find that people living in areas where forest regrowth has occurred have a higher intake of fruits and vegetables and thus higher dietary diversity.

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