Biofortification is a unique agricultural innovation that impacts nutrition and subsequent health for such a low level of effort. Even behavior change is at a minimum, as biofortified crops do not disrupt the traditional staple diets of the beneficiary populations, but rather enhance the ingredients. Additionally, biofortified varieties are bred to maintain (or exceed) yield and hardiness when compared to baseline varieties in the same region. The effects of COVID-19 and recent extreme weather events have shown that shocks to the food system have the greatest impact on the nutrition security of the most vulnerable – those living in poor or rural areas who rely on staple crops for food security. Climate change is leading to decreased yields and micronutrient contents in crops, and increased pest and disease incidence and food prices, with severe effects for smallholder famers. Biofortification is both nutrition and climate smart, and a critical intervention that could provide food systems with the resilience needed to ensure everyone has access to sufficient food and sufficient nutrition. Biofortified varieties are bred to be to be high yielding, with desirable agronomic traits like disease and drought resistance that are tested under local environmental condition. With their higher micronutrient content, they should more than counteract the nutrient loss in staple crops as a result of increasing CO2 emissions.

In target countries— Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan— HarvestPlus works to ensure farmers not only grow the more nutritious food but consume it as well. Delivery managers work with national partners to register and release new micronutrient-rich crop varieties in target countries. We engage with seed and extension systems to ensure that the crops are widely available and promoted to farmers. Our teams include marketing experts and behavior change specialists who collaborate with local organizations and communities to educate consumers on the benefits of eating these new crops. These new varieties must satisfy consumer tastes and have enough micronutrients to reduce malnutrition among rural communities that will grow and eat these foods regularly. In most cases, these foods look and taste the same as the most commonly eaten variety. When there is a detectable change, as in the case of vitamin A-rich crops that tend to be yellow to orange in color, HarvestPlus and our partners educate consumers on the nutritional benefits of these new varieties and encourage people to make the switch. When eaten regularly, these micronutrient-rich foods work to contribute to body stores of micronutrients—reducing hidden hunger in malnourished communities. ​With this said, HarvestPlus is working with both public and private sector partners to increase the production of widely-adaptable biofortified seed to rural farmers in an expanded target demographic (30 countries globally). By drawing in multinational and local private producers and others along the value chain, the goal is to reduce HarvestPlus direct management by creating a sustainable system far beyond the life of any program. ​In the short term, under the larger target of reaching 1 billion people by 2030, HarvestPlus is focused on ramping up seed breeding and dissemination in the Asia region over the next several years.
The next steps for HarvestPlus is drawing in more investers to help scale biofortified crops in each of the regions where we work. Currently, demand outweights the supply of biofortified seed, so we are working with more suppliers and distributors to create a greater output for each market. ​Multilateral partnerships, particularly PPP's, need to be forged to ensure greater chances for sustainability in each system that we build. Ramping up advocacy for policy incorporation of biofortification, at the government-level, is also a key next step for our team.