The Madhya Pradesh government will showcase its initiative of "nutrition smart villages" at an international workshop to be held here from May 14.
The three-day workshop on "Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture and Nutrition Literacy" seeks to educate people on the issue of undernourishment.
"We are working on developing a village each in 313 blocks of the state as a smart village where people are encouraged to produce what they eat by raising their nutrition sensitivity and literacy," Women and Child development minister, Archana Chitnis told reporters.
"Through this initiative we are trying to make villages self-reliant and a model for others," she said.
The scheme, which seeks to curb malnutrition, will be showcased at the workshop which will be inaugurated by Union Minister of Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Mines Narendra Singh Tomar, Chitnis said.
She said malnutrition-related deaths are now confined to the rainy season where the root cause is contaminated water and not undernourishment.
"A new path has been set through the establishment of nutrition smart villages at the block level. It will set a working model for nutrition security," the minister said.
The scheme works on the theme 'jo khaayen woh ugaayen' (eat what you grow), Chitnis said.
The workshop has been jointly organised by the state's Women and Child Development Department, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the UNICEF, the International Fund for Agriculture Development and the Deendayal Research Institute.
Activist and scientist Vandana Shiva will be one of the prominent speakers at the conference.
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