A World Food Resource

In The Nutrition Factor (Brokkings Institute, USA, 1973 pp. 89-92), Alan Berg writes:

An unusual depletion in the crude oil reserves of an oil-producing country of Asia or Latin America would be termed a crisis. Its economic and social implications would be so apparent that actions to reverse the trend would be awarded high priority.

Yet a comparable crisis, involving a valuable natural resource and losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, is going virtually unnoticed in many of the poor countries of the world.

The resource is human breast milk, and the loss is caused by the dramatic and steady decline of maternal nursing in recent decades. Already substantial in both economic and human terms, the costs and the probably major consequences suggest that methods aimed at arresting or decelerating this trend should be a prime concern in any effort to combat malnutrition.

The Cost

Twenty years ago 95 percent of Chilean mothers breast fed their children beyond the first year; by 1969 only 6 percent did so, and only 20 percent of the babies were being nursed for as long as two months. Potential breast milk production in Chile in 1950 was 57,700 tons, of which all but 2,900 tons, or 5 percent, were realized.

By 1970, 78,600 tons (or 84 percent) of 93,200 potential tons were unrealized. The milk of 32,000 Chilean cows would be required to compensate for the loss. In Kenya, where the decline in breast feeding is less dramatic, the estimated $11.5 million annual loss in breast milk is equivalent to two-thirds of the national health budget, or one-fifth of the average annual economic aid.

The estimated costs of breast milk losses would be lower if the additional calories recommended for a lactating mother were taken into account. But poor women in poor countries seldom get an enlarged or special diet during lactation. (Nearly three quarters of low-income women studied in Gujarat and two-thirds in Maharastra reported taking no special foods during the nursing period.) When extra food is consumed, it is usually much less than is recommended. (The average intake by lactating women in India is 1,425 calories, half the recommended allowance.)

If a mother were to eat all the additive calories recommended during nursing - and efforts should be made to encourage this - the cost would still be less than a third of that necessary to provide artificial feeding to the infant.

In most low-income countries, breast feeding is the general rule in rural areas. Its abandonment is primarily an urban phenomenon, often not so much because urban mothers work, as because bottle feeding is one of the sophistications of city life that the urban migrant adopts.

An estimated 87 percent of the world's babies are born in the developing countries, about a quarter of them in urban areas. If 20 percent of the estimated 27 billion mothers in urban areas do not breast feed, the loss in breast milk is $364 million. If half of the other 80 percent do not continue to breast feed after the first six months, the total loss reaches $780 million.

These estimates, however, clearly understate the situation; losses to developing countries more likely are in the billions.

"It should be noted here that the cost of feeding, say, a 6 months baby on an artificial baby food costing Sh. 19/75 per kilo is about Sh. 80/= per month which is 25% of the gross minimum wage. A traditional baby food comprising a mixture of cereals and legumes would be free to peasant farmers, or cost about Sh. 10/= per month in the market."

G.A. Semiti, Food and Agriculture Adviser, Ministry of National Education, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in a letter to the Arbeitsgruppe Dritte Welt, Bern, 1975.

"In addition, the energy cost and loss of raw materials in processing, packing, distributing, preparing, and refrigerating cow's milk formulas should be considered. For example, an infant reared on ready-to-feed formula based on cow's milk will use approximately 150 cans in 6 months of bottle feeding.

With 3 million births in the United States in 1974, an overall annual consumption of 450 million usually non-recyclable cans will result, with a waste of 70,000 tons of tin-plate each year."

D.B. Jelliffe and E.F.P. Jelliffe, in "Human Milk, Nutrition and the World Food Crisis", in Science, USA, May 1975.