About the Project
HarvestPlus is increasing the nutrient-density of school meals for two million children in India, by empowering local farming communities to produce, consume, and market biofortified grains to the government school feeding program with support from the Happel Foundation.
The project, “Health and Nutrition for School-Age Children” (HaNSA), will work through the Indian government’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS). The largest program of its kind in the world, the MDMS provides a free cooked meal to 120 million children daily. School meals provide a vital source of food in India, where malnutrition rates are staggering: nearly twenty percent of school-age children are zinc deficient and one in four is anemic, with iron deficiency being a major contributor. These and other deficiencies coexist and have lasting negative impacts, including compromised immune systems, stunted physical growth, and limited human potential.
HaNSA aims to help address the malnutrition challenge in India and capitalize on the existing school meal infrastructure by integrating locally produced and procured biofortified zinc wheat and iron pearl millet into school meals across six states: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana. The project began in July 2022 and will be implemented over four years.