A/HRC/19/59 budget32 and protecting women from pressure, including economic pressure, to renounce optimal breastfeeding practices would contribute significantly to positive nutritional outcomes. 19. The efforts on these fronts must continue. Nutrition interventions should be but one part of broader-based strategies for the realization of the right to adequate food. For example, the provision of fortified foods (enriched to improve nutritional content) may be necessary, where local production is insufficiently diversified and incapable of supplying the full range of foods required for adequate diets. Rebuilding and strengthening local food systems through diversified farming systems to ensure the availability of and accessibility to adequate diets will be more sustainable in the long term. Food systems based on local knowledge and conditions, such as homestead or community gardens, can be a costeffective way to combat micronutrient deficiency, as demonstrated by examples in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, the Niger and South Africa;33 such alternative food systems present the additional advantage of increasing local incomes and resilience to price shocks, another pathway through which positive nutritional outcomes can be achieved. 20. Fourth, potential concerns exist regarding the relationship between solutions that rely on imported technologies and products and the local contexts in which these solutions are applied. Technology has a key role to play in improved nutrition. For instance, the iodization of salt is a cost-effective way to reduce iodine deficiency. Biofortification—the improvement at crop level of the micronutrient content of staples—can provide important benefits for rural populations, improving their access to micronutrient-rich foods produced locally at more affordable prices, as illustrated by the adoption of the orange-fleshed sweet potato in Mozambique that reduced vitamin A deficiency significantly.34 But such technologies could result in long-term dependency for the communities concerned if protected by intellectual property rights. Moreover, opportunities and market access for local farmers could be reduced if they result in the creation of new markets that are captured by the economic actors introducing such technologies. 21. The discussion surrounding the contributions made by GAIN provides an illustration. One reason companies partner with GAIN is to reach the ―bottom of the pyramid,‖ i.e., potential customers who are too poor to constitute a solvent market in the short term. GAIN-supported initiatives, however, should not bar the emergence of sustainable and equitable solutions in which people are served by local producers. Some GAIN projects do build the capacity of local partners and can continue in the long term without external support. But any such interventions should include a clear exit strategy to empower communities to feed themselves. In this regard, donors should make their support to GAIN conditional upon such a requirement of subsidiarity and upon the adoption of a 32 33 34 M. Walsh, ―Women in food aid interventions: impacts and issues‖, in Time for Change: Food Aid and Development (World Food Programme, Rome, 2008); a child‘s chances of survival increase by 20 per cent when the mother controls the household budget. See M. Faber and A.J.S. Benadé, ―Integrated home-gardening and community-based growth monitoring activities to alleviate vitamin A deficiency in a rural village in South Africa,‖ Food, Nutrition and Agriculture, No. 32 (2003), pp. 24-32. See also A/HRC/19/59/Add.3, paras. 27-29 (on household food gardens and urban agriculture in KwaZulu-Natal Province). For the Asian country examples, see Helen Keller International, ―Homestead Food Production for Improving Micronutrient Status of Women and Children, Poverty Reduction and Promotion of Gender Equality,‖ 2006, and World Bank, From Agriculture to Nutrition: Pathways, Synergies and Outcomes (Washington, 2007), pp. 39-42. J. Low and others, ―A food-based approach introducing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes increased vitamin A intake and serum retinol concentrations among young children in rural Mozambique,‖ Journal of Nutrition, vol. 137 (2007), pp. 1320-1327. 11