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The promotion of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is recognized globally as an area with potential to improve food and nutrition security of urban residents. The government of the Philippines has recognized this and has implemented UPA and similar projects and programs since the 1970s. Support for these projects and programs has not been continuous. Interest in UPA was revived in 2022 with the National Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Banner Program (NUPAP), which was implemented by the Department of Agriculture (DA) with high-level support from the administration. The program rose in prominence during the COVID-19 when it became a cornerstone of the government’s response to maintain food and nutrition security. NUPAP is unique in the international context as it is a national program that receives support from all levels of government (national and sub-national) and engages multiple stakeholders (private sector, academics, research organizations, non-government organizations and people’s organizations). However, there is not a lot of documentation available that describes the program in a systematic and independent way, which is an important information gap that this study seeks to fill. Against this backdrop, this study aimed to gain a better understanding of the design and intended impacts of the NUPAP program. We chose to focus on NUPAP support for urban community gardens and commercial farms in the Metro Manila area. The study relied on a review of documents and interviews with government implementers, partners, and beneficiary communities. Our study finds that NUPAP has supported a very large number of initiatives, often contributing to other ongoing programs such as the Department of Education’s school garden program or local government programs. NUPAP provided support on demand but did not identify key vulnerable populations or urban locations that needed support. As such, it appears that most community garden initiatives already existed before support was received and many initiatives benefitted from multiple sources of support. There are numerous government and private initiatives in Metro Manila, an area that covers a population of at least 13.5 million people, and NUPAP was instrumental in coordinating across initiatives. Clear challenges remain such as the need for more collaborative and integrated efforts to support the supply of vegetable seed and seedlings, climate-resilient agriculture, credit and financing for commercial vegetable growers, and the need to improved program monitoring and evaluation.

BACKGROUND The consumption of fruit and vegetables is well below the 400 g/person/day that is recommended by the World Health Organization for good human health, and both food groups remain unaffordable to millions of people around the world. Only three countries in sub-Saharan Africa meet this recommendation (Kalmpourtzidou et al., 2020). Increasing the consumption of fruit and vegetables will require coordinated changes in availability, affordability, access and acceptability: ● Availability refers to increasing fruit and vegetable supplies (yields or acreage) through increased farm production and marketing, increased imports or reduced exports, reducing postharvest losses, or reorganizing value chains to create better incentives for farmers to increase production. It is one of the six dimensions of food security as it allows sufficient quantity and quality of food to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals (HLPE, 2020). ● Affordability deals with lowering the price of fruit and vegetables through changes in supply or marketing systems, subsidies or the removal of taxes on inputs, removal of market constraints, or shortening of value chains. Unfortunately, more than 77 percent of the population cannot afford healthy diets composed of fruit and vegetables in sub-Saharan Africa, and 57 percent cannot afford it in South Asia (FAO et al, 2020). ● Access deals with physical access to fruit and vegetables to consumers through shops, markets or institutional food and nutrition programs like canteens and school meals (HLPE, 2020). It also deals with intrahousehold allocation of food that can affect people’s access to fruit and vegetables within a household. ● Acceptance or desirability refers to people’s perceptions of fruit and vegetables, their awareness and liking (preferences), the perceived association of fruit and vegetable consumption with social status, nutrition knowledge and nutrition education to influence this knowledge. Our study adopts the food systems framework (HLPE, 2017) to investigate the state of literature on fruit and vegetable interventions. The food systems approach considers a wide range of drivers that can be grouped as: biophysical and environmental; innovation, technology and infrastructure; political and economic; socio-cultural; and demographic factors. The framework highlights how these varied drivers relate to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food as well as socio-economic and environmental outcomes. The holistic nature of this framework has informed the breadth of the keywords and topics that this scoping study attempts to cover. The original framework while encompassing diverse drivers does not adequately address the issues of inclusivity in food systems. Recent work by Harris et al (2022) builds upon this to include cross-cutting factors such as equality, equity, rights and agency. This expansion of the framework also guides this study, which looks to contribute to greater clarity on this issue of equity and inclusion by looking at interventions across both fruits and vegetables, as well as across a range of outcomes. A number of systematic reviews have been conducted on the fruit and vegetables sectors. A major strand of literature focuses on how different fruit and vegetable interventions, such as school-based (Evans et al., 2012), home-based or community interventions (Savoie-Roskos et al., 2017, Depenbusch et al, 2021) influence consumption and dietary patterns. Mensah et al., (2021) examine the consumption of fruit and vegetables in sub-Saharan Africa and report increasing vegetable intake in the last three decades, albeit still very low per capita consumption (268g). Pomerleau et al. (2005) show that interventions involving face-to-face education or counseling have a positive effect on fruit and vegetable consumption among adults. Recent literature increasingly looks at the role of food environments in fruit and vegetable consumption. Cheung et al (2021) identify unavailability and urbanization as important factors limiting consumption in East and Southeast Asia. Turner et al., (2021) in their review examining studies on access to fruit and vegetables in the retail food environment and its association with fruit and vegetables consumption among adults in high- and upper-middle income countries, find a positive association between increased availability and intake. While scoping and systematic reviews exist on selected fruit and vegetable interventions, there is a gap in capturing fruit and vegetable interventions across other food system aspects like food supply chains and consumer behaviour. An exception is a recent scoping review by Harris et al. (2022) that assesses how studies of food systems for healthy diets have addressed the role of vegetables in low- and middle-income countries. Yet that study focused on the interface of vegetables, food systems and diets and did not look at the strength of the evidence. We build on this literature by using a food systems perspective to examine studies on fruit and vegetable interventions and their impact on multiple dimensions including, but not limited to, economic, nutrition and social outcomes. To the best of our knowledge, no literature review so far has investigated the inclusivity of past or ongoing fruit and vegetable-related initiatives and what improvements future initiatives need to consider. We argue that effective interventions to increase availability, affordability, access and acceptability of fruit and vegetables have to be inclusive of socially, economically and/or physically marginalized groups, including women and youth. Indeed, Wang et al. (2022) noticed that food policy interventions often have limited effects on marginalized groups. However, consumers and the food environment interact to enable/disable food accessibility, affordability and availability (Booth et al, 2021). Additionally, the need to leverage interventions on both the supply and demand sides along with adequate policy support (Push - Pull - Policy) is key to improving economic and nutritional benefits. Methodologically, we fill the gap in the assessment of fruit and vegetable interventions by focusing on studies with diverse research designs and rigour in their evaluation techniques, including but not limited to randomized controlled trials. A lack of strong evidence on the impact of interventions can lead to a misconception on the economic and nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables and adversely impact the adoption of technologies to improve availability, affordability and accessibility of these foods. Against this backdrop, we have developed a methodology to conduct a scoping review to provide an overview of the available literature. This study may also inform a subsequent systematic review to analyze the strengths and gaps of the existing interventions using a food systems approach. Our study focuses on interventions that have aimed to improve availability, affordability, access, and/or acceptability of fruit and vegetables. The scoping review will cover all geographical regions given the diverse nutrition challenges afflicting high-, middle- and low-income countries. Understanding the strengths and gaps in fruit and vegetable interventions in food systems will aid policymakers, academics and development organizations in understanding critical gaps that need to be addressed for better outcomes.

The project “Vegetable variety and technology scaling in northern Nigeria" will look at the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals Partnership project “Transforming Nigeria’s Vegetable Markets” in Northern Nigeria. The SDGP project is used as a case study to gain an in-depth understanding of effective scaling mechanisms for vegetable technologies (improved varieties and good agricultural practices) and assess the impact of these technologies on livelihood outcomes for smallholder vegetable farmers. Two rounds of observational data are used from a sample of intervention, consisting of households trained and supported, and sample of control households, which did not receive training or support. To minimize spillover effects, the sample was clustered at the village level. Baseline data collection was done in September and October 2020. End-line data will start take place in October and November 2022.

Analyze the adoption of improved vegetable varieties by smallholder farmers

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-3-fnb-10.1177_03795721211068652 for Vegetables for Healthy Diets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review of the Food Systems Literature by Jody Harris, Winson Tan, Jessica E. Raneri, Pepijn Schreinemachers and Anna Herforth in Food and Nutrition Bulletin

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-2-fnb-10.1177_03795721211068652 for Vegetables for Healthy Diets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review of the Food Systems Literature by Jody Harris, Winson Tan, Jessica E. Raneri, Pepijn Schreinemachers and Anna Herforth in Food and Nutrition Bulletin

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-4-fnb-10.1177_03795721211068652 for Vegetables for Healthy Diets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review of the Food Systems Literature by Jody Harris, Winson Tan, Jessica E. Raneri, Pepijn Schreinemachers and Anna Herforth in Food and Nutrition Bulletin

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-fnb-10.1177_03795721211068652 for Vegetables for Healthy Diets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review of the Food Systems Literature by Jody Harris, Winson Tan, Jessica E. Raneri, Pepijn Schreinemachers and Anna Herforth in Food and Nutrition Bulletin