In a dusty village on the outskirts of Faisalabad, eight-year-old Bilal shuffles into his class with a dull ache in his limbs and a vacant look in his eyes. His growth has long been stunted, his energy drained and his capacity to learn severely compromised—all because of the invisible crisis of micronutrient deficiency.

Born to a daily wage labourers’ family, who can barely afford two meals a day, Bilal has never known a balanced diet. His meals typically consist of substandard flour, daal or sabzi—hardly the fuel needed to nurture a young, developing brain.

Bilal is not alone. Across Pakistan, millions of children suffer silently from malnutrition, particularly from zinc and iron deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakened immune systems and reduced cognitive development. The economic cost is enormous—Pakistan loses an estimated 3-4 percent of its GDP annually due to the long-term consequences of malnutrition, including poor school performance, lost productivity and increased healthcare costs. But now, thanks to a pioneering initiative in Bilal’s village, there is hope—hope that children like him can begin to thrive.

In this very village, HarvestPlus Solutions has rolled out a transformative school meal pilot project that is rapidly turning things around. This pilot initiative has been started under HarvestPlus-funded project Expanding Nutrients in Food Systems with support from the Government of Canada. The programme, which centres around the distribution of zinc-enriched wheat flour—developed from the Akbar 2019, a biofortified wheat variety—has already begun to yield life-changing results.

Over 580 students, mostly girls, were provided with two 10-kg bags of this biofortified whole wheat grain flour, enough to feed them wholesome, nutritious meals for three months. The chapattis made from this flour are not only more nutritious but, as most of the children report, “tastier than any they’ve had before.”

But the impact doesn’t stop at the school gates. Local school teacher Esha Zahid has witnessed remarkable changes in her students: “Their attention spans are better, they fall sick less often and school attendance has improved,” she says. Parents have begun switching to the zinc-enriched flour for home use, thanks to awareness sessions on nutrition and hygiene conducted as part of the programme.

One mother, whose daughter Areebah attends the same school, proudly says, “We now eat the same nutritious flour at home—it’s pure and healthy and our chapattis have never tasted better.”

Across Pakistan, millions of children suffer silently from malnutrition, particularly from zinc and iron deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakened immune systems and reduced cognitive development. 

What makes this initiative particularly noteworthy is its emphasis on sustainability and local empowerment of smallholders. HarvestPlus Solutions worked to create direct market linkages between smallholder farmers growing Akbar 2019 zinc wheat and local millers, ensuring that the supply chain remains intact and economically viable even after the pilot ends.

In essence, it’s a community-powered model: farmers earn more by growing nutritious, high yielding and disease-resistant crops; local millers find a stable demand; and families get affordable, healthy food. The school acts as the fulcrum of this ecosystem, driving not just learning but nutrition, behavior change and local development.

The roots of this success trace back to HarvestPlus and its sister platform, HarvestPlus Solutions, which have been scaling similar school meal programmes globally. By the end of 2024, their Home-Grown Nutritious School Meals Programme had reached over one million learners across Asia and Africa.

Using a blend of policy collaboration, farmer support, school-based gardening and mass sensitisation efforts, this model has redefined how school meals can become a cornerstone of food systems transformation.

Across the board, the programme has led to better school attendance, improved dietary habits, stronger immunity and economic uplift for small-holding farmers, who have found consistent markets for their produce.

In Pakistan, where nearly 40 percent of children under five are stunted and every fifth is deficient in zinc, the replication of this model holds enormous promise. The government, NGOs and private sector stakeholders have an opportunity to rally behind this tested, scalable framework. Biofortification—embedding nutrition into staple crops like wheat and rice—offers a low-cost, high-impact solution to one of the country’s most persistent public health challenges.

HarvestPlus Solutions is now calling for broader partnerships to expand this movement across Pakistan, especially in rural Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where food insecurity is even more dire. If such school meal projects are scaled thoughtfully and supported consistently, the day is not far when healthy children will no longer be the exception, they will be the norm.

The writer is an investigative reporter, currently covering health, science, environment and water issues for The News International.