My understanding on your final question is that this is absolutely something which can/should be exchanged here. It might start with a simple discussion round and then at best would be transformed into structured output in form of an article in the KB or even a collection of articles (e.g. one per method/produce). Happy to hear other views on the matter - Riff Fullan, Markus Arbenz, Bernet Thomas ?

I totally agree with Simon and with Sue's original call to preserve and share crucial nutrient-related local knowledge. One good thing about the MAAN platform is we can have discussions and share information resources in an open way and then down the road decide on how to best 'package' it as an output. It would be very time consuming to do this for all topics, but I think Sue has hit on one that will be of interest across the board and be of practical use, so worth a bit of effort to pull the threads together.

Thank you IFOAM Administrator and Riff Fullan, for unpacking and focusing my initial thinking. I hope others from the country teams can contribute suggestions. We have information collected for some of Ethiopia's traditional foods and could explore these further to, say, identify about 5 preserved foods with their ingredients and recipes as well as their use and role in local food culture and nutrition. But let us see what comes from other country teams. Sue Edwards 

Dear Sue Edwards, I was missing your input. Maybe we should always indicate the @name of the person we would like to take the stake to continue the discussion.  There are traditional and ancient methods for food processing to conserve foods, and while keeping their nutritional value it is adding additional life beings that otherwise these food stuff will not have.  Potatoes, for example, can be processed in different ways. There is one way where natural penicillin can be produced, called Tocosh.https://healthyeatingprogram.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/tocosh-andino-natural-penicillin/ or lyophilization technology for chuño, freeze-dried potatoes.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/ancient-freeze-drying_n_3786668.html These tecnologies has been used by millenia, since ancient times.

I also think it is important to discuss which preservation technique we think are worthwhile sharing. As nutritionist I of course look at the nutritional aspect, but I can imagine you also are interested in other aspects. Fermenting, used traditionally in many countries, often increase the nutritional quality of food. Improved solar dryers/ coolers are tested which have as benefit that the nutrients are better preserved than in traditional methods.

Meeting with inge.

ISD Ethiopian, NMA staffs   Gizaw Gebremariam: National Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture Expert (NSA) and Alemayehu Ayalew: National RSP facilitator had a fruitful discussion with inge, on December 10, 2015.   Inge, nutrition from WU, one of her colleague and Ato Belay, from CASCAPE (AAU) accompanied the discussion in Momona Hotel here in Addis Ababa.

The discussion held with introducing each and proceeded to talk about the status of the project. We both Gizaw and I described well about the project progress and limitation.  The attention has given by the government and existing woreda level structure and the Soqota declaration about Nutrition are the main opportunity to the implementation MNA.   And we tried to share the process of selecting RSP and our Nutritional Sensitive Agriculture intervention.  Inge gave good advice that our intervention should be focused in health center and health people rather than waiting school gardening. This and her input is really valuable for ISD, NMA project particularly her input highly considered in my next week follow up discussion in the three project woredas and the two university.  Specially, I have gained ideas from the discussion to include health sector in both Wollo and Woldeya Universities. 

We, both Gizaw and I would like to express our thanks for an one hour discussion with all the team through Inge, and the input given to us was helpful.

Best

Alex 

Dear All members of MAAN

The effect of nutrition on human development

Have you heard about fetal programing?