1 An analysis of the food system landscape and agricultural value chains for nutrition: A case study from Sierra Leone Authors: Joyce Njoro, Nyahabeh Anthony, Iris de Hoogh, Jessica Fanzo, Nawal Chahid, Daniel Fornah, Matthew L. S. Gboku, Momodu Kamara, Alimamy Kargbo, Aminata Koroma, Bjorn Ljungqvist, John J. Momoh, Alisia Osiro, Memuna Sawi, Edward Rhodes, Sylvetta Scott Senoe Torgerson, Marianne van Dorp, and Esther Wiegers. Contributing Organizations: Njala University, Sierra Leone Agriculture Research Institute, Wageningen University and Research Centre, REACH, and Columbia University One of the greatest challenges in development is to ensure that all people have access to sufficient and quality food to ensure food and nutrition security. The agricultural sector in Africa consists mainly of rain-fed, low- technology, low-input, non-mechanized smallholder farming (IFAD 2011) and food production has been insufficient largely due to conflict, natural disasters, crop failure and food prices. While agriculture remains the backbone of the rural economy and increasing agricultural outputs impacts economic growth, agriculture interventions have failed to improve nutritional outcomes (Berti et al 2004). The emphasis has been mainly on food production and less on nutrition security. Agriculture-based approaches to improving diet diversity and nutrition are not straightforward and many potential solutions are in the research pipeline. Food and nutrient losses along the value chain, which may be caused by ineffective or inefficient harvesting, storage, processing and handling, are other factors that affect the availability, cost and hence affordability of nutrient-rich foods. This paper summarizes a qualitative case study conducted in Sierra Leone to explore the programmatic challenges of linking nutrition and agriculture nationally through a food system landscape analysis, and the implementation of nutrition-sensitive value chains of two commodities – rice and vegetables. The research undertaken in this project aimed to understand the role markets and value chains play in improving dietary diversification both directly, through an increase in the production of nutritious foods sourced from smallholders in Sierra Leone, and indirectly, through an increase in income for smallholder farmers. Much of the analyses done in this study examined the supply side of the value chain. The study highlights the importance in engaging women in value chains, and their potential role as “change agents” to ensure that nutrition is better integrated along the value chains as producers and consumers (IFPRI/ILRI, 2010). The study also identified various pathways through which rice and vegetables production, processing and marketing could contribute to improving nutritional status and health. Agriculture and health actors would benefit from jointly developing nutrition indicators to insert into the value chain that address both nutrition and agriculture. While a single intervention targeting only one component of the value chain is likely to have a limited impact, addressing all the identified issues, with several interventions at different levels of the chain can make a real difference. Recommendations to policy makers Holistic engagement of value chains: The research recommends the need for a more holistic approach to value chain programming that engages nutrition along the entire chain. Most of the existing interventions in Sierra Leone only addressed one step of the value chain, being too restrictive and specific and therefore had very little impact. For example, many production interventions do not address processing, fortification, packaging and marketing issues, which makes it difficult for farmers to add real value to their produce. Food processing and value addition of foods