Women and children in complex emergencies are at high risk for malnutrition, poor health outcomes, and food insecurity. USAID Advancing Nutrition set out to better understand how nutrition-sensitive agriculture contributes to improved outcomes through research with two USAID activities, a qualitative and quantitative study in the Far North Region of Cameroon and a secondary data analysis in South Sudan. 

From both of these studies we found that: 

• Agricultural interventions in complex emergencies can increase women’s dietary diversity through both food production for consumption pathways and income generation pathways, particularly when designed with a nutrition-sensitive focus. 
• Support for complementary feeding should be considered as an intervention to increase the percent of children meeting minimum dietary diversity. 
• Several household and external factors were associated with dietary diversity and should thus be considered in project design. 
• Intentionally designing nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions in complex emergencies may help to improve women’s diet diversity for those who are able to make use of these resources. 
• The influence of social support on dietary diversity requires more research, but findings suggest that maternal social support and social cohesion may be important considerations in project design.