Vol.:(0123456789) Environment, Development and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02171-3 1 3 Food and agriculture, nutrition and health related policy integration in Iran’s national development agenda and their alignment with the sustainable development goals Ali Milani‑Bonab 1,5  · Naser Kalantari 1  · Amirhossein Takian 2,3,4  · Arezoo Haghighian‑Roudsari 1 Received: 19 September 2020 / Accepted: 31 January 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022 Abstract Integration between diferent components of the food system would foster achieving food and nutrition security as a key pillar of sustainable development. Signifcant improvement has been made in the feld of food and nutrition security as well as in institutionalizing integration in food and agriculture, nutrition and health policymaking to achieve sustain- able development in the Iranian context, however, the sectors are still operating somewhat in isolation from one another while this is in sharp contrast with the integrative nature of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim of this study was to draw a compre- hensive picture of the journey from coordination to integration and in institutionalizing food and nutrition security and its policymaking within the framework of national develop- ment in Iran. In this study, 43 multi-lateral upstream documents in food and agriculture, nutrition and health sectors were analyzed using a deductive document analysis method. Three series of data coding were performed, including (a) exploring the direct and indi- rect components of agriculture, food, nutrition and health systems, (b) exploring the policy integration based on processual policy integration framework and (c) Exploring the align- ment state of policy components with the SDGs. Our study showed that despite imple- menting several multi-lateral interventions, and in some cases integrated policies, food and nutrition insecurity are still critical concerns. The study afrms that although remarkable improvements in food and nutrition policy-making and institutional capacity development have been realized, the country’s journey from the “nutrition sciences” to “food and nutri- tion policy” has not ended yet and integration in food and nutrition policymaking is yet to be achieved in the country. To efectively address the issue, multi-sectoral representation in joint work should be transformed into inter-sectoral integration based on interdiscipli- nary and inter-sectoral research at policy and integrated operational agenda for all sectors involved. In this process, participation of civil society, women, the private sector and the industry should be well recognized and encouraged. Keywords Food and nutrition policy · Integration · SDGs * Amirhossein Takian takian@tums.ac.ir Extended author information available on the last page of the article