Health sector advocacy for repurposing agricultural investments affecting fruits, vegetables and legumes.

Abstract

Increasing population intake of fruits, vegetables and legumes could reduce diet-related mortality. The World Health Organization recommends that countries adopt fiscal tools to address the relative affordability of healthy foods, including through taxes and subsidies. Most global agricultural subsidy support has been tied to the production of specific commodities, predominately grains. Heavily embedded financial and regulatory focus on a narrow range of commodities has encouraged monocropping and intensive farming at the expense of dietary diversity. To address this issue, the United Nations recommends that countries phase out distortive policies and subsidies, and repurpose these with more efficient and equitable measures. This would provide an opportunity for the health policy community to engage on the investment needed to promote production, supply and demand for fruit, vegetables and legumes. This article supports this engagement, by describing the current policy context for agricultural subsidies and some of the specific policy options for increasing fruit, vegetable and legume production, supply and demand. The article outlines ways through which the health policy community can support the development of a repurposing policy agenda for fruit, vegetables and legumes by building awareness of the benefits of such an agenda; strategically engaging across sectors to develop a cohesive package of policy measures for increasing fruit, vegetable and legume production, supply and demand; and engaging with agriculture and other sectors to navigate the complexities of a repurposing agenda, ensuring a range of sectoral concerns are addressed.