United Nations World Food Programme

IRMA is computed on one representative ton of the food aid basket the user has selected. The "representativity" of the ton comes from the fact that the shares of the commodities are the same as those in the total selected food basket. Therefore it can be used for comparisons among food aid baskets of different size and in understanding how much of their difference in nutritional content is due to the absolute value in metric tons of the donations and how much is due to the nutritional qualities of food delivered.   IRMA, IRMAs and IRMAt provide only information on their 'nutritional potential' of meeting average requirements.

The energy intake of a human being is the only one among the nutrients that cannot in the short run be renounced without putting at immediate risk the possibility of survival itself. A lack of other nutrients increases susceptibility to infections and slows cognitive development and growth, contributing to poorer school performance and reduced work productivity. These effects are largely irreversible and long term, particularly when they occur at a young age. For these reasons, the IRMAs computation takes the content of Energy as a benchmark to compare with the other nutrients' content. For the calculation of IRMAs, we start with the IRMA values for each nutrient. IRMA of a nutrient counts the number of average individuals that could potentially be satisfied by the nutrient contained in a ton of food aid.   IRMA, IRMAs and IRMAt provide only information on their 'nutritional potential' of meeting average requirements.

IRMAt (Individual Requirements Met on Average, Total) can be considered an alternative measure for food aid deliveries. By knowing how many tons of which commodity are contained in the food aid basket, it is easy to compute how many micrograms of nutrients there are in the overall basket. But, a measure like that would not be easy to interpret. Furthermore, each nutrient is measured in a different unit (for example, vitamin C is measured in micrograms and fat is measured in grams). IRMAt 'standardizes' the nutritional content of food aid by taking it as a percentage of human nutritional requirements. IRMAt of a nutrient is nothing but the number of individual requirements that could potentially be met on an annual basis by the total food aid deliveries selected. IRMAt values are descriptive of a food aid basket and are dependent on the absolute value in tonnage. They give information that reflects both nutritional content and the size of the food aid deliveries. From this point of view IRMAt can be considered a unit of measurement for food aid flows: it measures food aid basket by the number of average individuals that its nutritional content could potentially satisfy.   IRMA, IRMAs and IRMAt provide only information on their 'nutritional potential' of meeting average requirements.

Quantity Reporting: Measure food aid deliveries in metric tons