What do we know about the long-term outcomes of food systems interventions?

Fighting hunger and increasing global food security are central to the Norwegian Government’s Food Security Strategy, launched in November 2022 with the goal of ensuring that the world’s poor have access to sufficient safe and nutritious food, which meets their dietary needs and food preferences, to live active and healthy lives.  

While there is a keen interest in evaluations and research, including impact evaluations, there is limited evidence of long-term effects of interventions. This is unfortunate as some effects may take longer to appear, and we may fail to learn what works in different contexts. To remedy this and to increase our evidence base about what works in the long-term, the Department for Evaluation has initiated a mapping of the time-perspective in impact evaluations.  

The mapping is conducted by 3ie, and the synthesis report has collated and mapped evidence from 2019 impact evaluations of food security interventions identified from “the Evidence Gap Map; The effects of food systems interventions on food security and nutrition outcomes in low- and middle- income countries” also conducted by 3ie.