The influence of crop production and socioeconomic factors on seasonal household dietary diversity in Burkina Faso

Abstract

Households in low-income settings are vulnerable to seasonal changes in dietary diversity because of fluctuations in food availability and access. We assessed seasonal differences in household dietary diversity in Burkina Faso, and determined the extent to which household socioeconomic status and crop production diversity modify changes in dietary diversity across seasons, using data from the nationally representative 2014 Burkina Faso Continuous Multisectoral Survey (EMC). A household dietary diversity score based on nine food groups was created from household food consumption data collected during four rounds of the 2014 EMC. Plot-level crop production data, and data on household assets and education were used to create variables on crop diversity and household socioeconomic status, respectively. Analyses included data for 10,790 households for which food consumption data were available for at least one round. Accounting for repeated measurements and controlling for the complex survey design and confounding covariates using a weighted multi-level model, household dietary diversity was significantly higher during both lean seasons periods, and higher still during the harvest season as compared to the post-harvest season (mean: post-harvest: 4.76 (SE 0.04); beginning of lean: 5.13 (SE 0.05); end of lean: 5.21 (SE 0.05); harvest: 5.72 (SE 0.04)), but was not different between the beginning and the end of lean season. Seasonal differences in household dietary diversity were greater among households with higher food expenditures, greater crop production, and greater monetary value of crops sale (P<0.05). Seasonal changes in household dietary diversity in Burkina Faso may reflect nutritional differences among agricultural households, and may be modified both by households’ socioeconomic status and agricultural characteristics.

Food Security Status of Households in a Cassava-Growing Village in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

“…Factors affecting household food security include household assets, household savings, education, access to credit, non-farm work, family size, soil fertility, irrigation access, electricity connection, cultivated land size, income, and gender of household head (Some and Jones, 2018). Food consumption usually constitutes more than two-third of overall expenditure of poor households, so owning a food crop farm will increase food security of poor households.…”

Ecological and Nutritional Functions of Agroecosystems as Indicators of Smallholder Resilience

“…Market-orientation, one form of adaptive capacity explored in our case study, can provide an additional pathway to diet quality through income generation for food purchases (Sibhatu et al, 2015a;Sibhatu and Qaim, 2018), although prior studies have noted that high-calorie, high shelf-life purchased foods that contribute to diet diversity may be supplanting more nutritious traditional foods even in rural contexts (Oyarzun et al, 2013). In remote settings (Koppmair et al, 2016) or the off-season for cash crop production (Some and Jones, 2018), however, the diversity of crops available on the farm gains relative importance. While our indicator framework does not explicitly include communityscale measures, we have demonstrated through our test case that it has potential to identify the effects of communitylevel shocks on households.…”

Food security in rural sub-Saharan Africa : a household level assessment of crop-livestock systems

“…This differentiation of households is most apparent in the dietary diversity indicator, where in both 'flush' and 'lean' periods, purchased food groups are more numerous than consumption of own-farm produced food groups (Table 5.5). This is logical in this setting where at maximum, households could source nine of the twelve categories from their farm (including processing oil); realistically, households were observed to source two to three categories from their farm in the 'flush' period (similar findings in Some & Jones, 2018). These farm-sourced categories were largely limited to the cereals and 'pulses, legumes and nuts' categories.…”

“…The emerging areas of investigation have centered on the roles of subsistence and market-orientated agriculture and off-farm income in HFIAS, HDDS or nutrient adequacy ratios. Income, and thus purchased foods has been found to be highly associated with dietary diversity in the majority of these studies, whereas food from subsistence production, while also significant, had a limited relationship with dietary diversity (Some & Jones, 2018;Bellon et al, 2016;Koppmair et al, 2016;Luckett et al, 2015;Sibhatu et al, 2015;Snapp & Fisher, 2015;and Dillon et al, 2014). Jones (2016) andM'Kaibi et al (2015) in comparison, emphasised the positive relationship farm production has with food security indicators (diet diversity and micro/macro nutrient intake in Jones, 2016; nutrient adequacy ratios and HFIAS in M' Kaibi et al, 2015).…”

“…Chronic and hidden hunger are experienced most severely in the lean period. The most food insecure period is during planting (typically June to August), where the lean period typically extends from May to mid-August -with some variation across agro-ecological zones (Some & Jones, 2018). In general, diet diversity is lower in the Sahel and Sudanian Savanna zones compared the wider Burkina Faso (ibid.…”