RICE FORTIFICATION
Scaling Up Rice Fortification in Bangladesh
The overall objective of the Rice Fortification Programme is:
“to reduce micronutrient deficiencies in high-risk groups in Bangladesh, with a
strong focus on women and children and, through that, to contribute to the
empowerment of women.”
Duration
December 1, 2013 – May 31, 2017
(3 years and 6 months)
Program Area
Description
While significant gains have been made in relation to poverty reduction and
development in Bangladesh, high rates of extreme poverty, food insecurity and
under-nutrition still affect sixty million people who survive on less than the
minimum 2,122 kcal per day. Extreme under-nutrition among women is still
prevalent in Bangladesh. Mothers stunted by under nutrition give birth to low
birth weight babies; which affects more than one in five new-borns. This means
that from the beginning of life the child’s learning and future income earning
potential is greatly inhibited, thus increasing their risk of under-nutrition in
adulthood and creating an intergenerational cycle of under nutrition. One of the
greatest challenges facing Bangladesh is to break this intergenerational cycle of
under nutrition.
Rice is the main staple food and consumed in substantial quantity in
Bangladesh. Regular milled rice is low in micronutrients and serves primarily as
a source of carbohydrates. Fortified rice kernels developed by DSM contain
added micronutrients, but look, taste and cook like ordinary rice. Therefore,
fortified rice can deliver essential vitamins and minerals missing in many
people’s meals, and can help ensure the poorest get the nutrition they need for
an active and healthy life in their present diets. The Scaling Up Rice
Fortification in Bangladesh programme aims at making fortified rice available to
180,000 direct beneficiaries and indirectly to another 380,000 people. The
project will target predominantly poor women. Eighty four per cent of the direct
beneficiaries will be women and by improving their nutritional status, in
combination with social and economic skills development, the project will have
a positive impact on activities contributing to the empowerment of women.
At a different level, the overall goal that the Rice Fortification project hopes to
achieve is to convince the government and donors about the merits of rice
fortification and persuade these to make available the additional funds needed
to mainstream rice fortification in all government social safety net programmes
and in garment factories. In addition, the project aims at creating a market for
fortified rice among the general public. For this, the foundations will be laid for
both consumer demand for fortified rice as well as for the local production of
essential inputs.
Target Group
500.000 people, especially women.
Donor
Embassy of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands (EKN)
Implementing Partners
Programme Components or Outcomes
1. Mainstream fortified rice in the government-run social safety net
programmes: The first step is getting rice fortification integrated/
mainstreamed in existing programmes. Subsequently, the second step of
the result chain is taking the fortified rice to the beneficiaries to realize
improved nutrition, women empowerment and poverty reduction as well as
some specific programme lessons. The project is presently working through
the VGD (Vulnerable Group Development: 100% women) and VGF
(Vulnerable Group Feeding: 50% women) social safety net programmes run
by the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs and the Minister of Disaster
Management and Relief respectively.
2. Integrate fortified rice into WFP-assisted programmes: The project also
works with WFP-assisted food distribution programmes; the ‘Enhancing
Resilience to the Effects of Natural Disasters and Climate Change’
programme, with 70% of the beneficiaries being women, and the ‘ School
Meals initiative’ has solely children as its beneficiaries.
3. Mainstream fortified rice in garment factories’ corporate social responsibility
programmes; This project also targets large-scale garment factories in
order to provide fortified rice to their workers as an extension of the
garment factories’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes.
Approximately 90% of garment workers are women; working with garment
factories offers an excellent entry point to address undernutrition of women.
4. Strengthen market demand for fortified rice: This programme component
refers to making the general public aware of the benefits of fortified rice and
creating economic demand for fortified rice, which will in turn help sustain
local production of fortified rice. To achieve this, WFP will develop a Social
Marketing Strategy as part of the project.
5. Establish blending capacity for fortified rice; Rice Fortification emphasizes
the importance of capacity-building of the national industry to fortify rice and
produce fortified rice at a large scale. Fortified rice should be blended in
mills in an appropriate manner to avoid loss of micronutrients and to ensure
the correct blend.
6. Establish production of fortified rice kernels: Fortification costs are currently
relatively high in Bangladesh; this can decrease substantially with local
production of fortified kernels (now imported from China) and through
optimizing the value chain. The Rice Fortification project helps rice mills in
Bangladesh to adjust their production process so as to be able to blend
fortified kernels with normal rice.
Partner Information
The World Food Programme is a UN
organisation which has a humanitarian
and development mandate, which
includes: food aid in emergencies, the
use of food aid to support economic
and
social
development
and
contribution to international food
security. The Bangladesh Country
Office is at the forefront of WFP’s
global shift from food aid to food
assistance. WFP has been assisting
the poorest people of Bangladesh
through development programmes over
the past 39 years in close cooperation
with the Government (GoB).
DSM is one of the world’s largest
producers of micronutrients. It strives
for market growth for fortified rice by
transferring the technology to local
private sector partners, to improve
nutritional
status
and
address
micronutrient deficiencies. In a joint
venture
with Bühler,
a
Swiss
multinational company specialized in
food processing plants and equipment,
DSM has developed the NutriRice
technology, to produce high quality
fortified rice kernels.
Program ID
Activity No. Pir 25478
Contract No. DHA0117741
Budget
EUR 3,75 million
Contact
WFP Bangladesh:
IDB Bhaban 14th, 16th and 17th Floor
E/8-A, Rokeya Sharani Agargaon,
Sher-e Bangla Nagar, Dhaka-1207
Contribution to National Policy Programs or Projects
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
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National Food Policy
Country Investment Plan for Agriculture, Food security and Nutrition
Government-driven social safety net programmes
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes
Rezaul Karim, Head of Programme
Planning and Implementation Support
(PPIS): [email protected]
EKN: [email protected]