Farm production diversity and its association with dietary diversity in Kenya

Agriculture has the potential to improve dietary diversity through farm production diversity if farming households consume what they produce. However, the linkages between a household’s own agricultural production and dietary diversity are not well understood. This study uses a count of crop species, animal species, production diversity score, and the Simpson’s index as measures of farm production diversity to assess the effect of production diversity on the dietary diversity of households, women and children. A Poison model was employed on a sample of 779 farming households selected using a multistage sampling technique in a household survey representative at the County level in Kisii and Nyamira Counties, Kenya. The findings of the study indicate that farm production diversity is significantly associated with the dietary diversity of women and that of the entire household, but is not associated with the dietary diversity of children. The count of the animal species has the highest magnitude of association with dietery diversity in this study. Every additional animal species kept leads to a 0.33 and 0.13 increase in household dietery diversity and the dietery diversity of women respectively. Children’s dietary diversity is significantly associated with the education of the mother, household size and age of the child. The study highlights the need to consider individual dietary requirements when developing nutrition interventions and policy, as opposed to general dietary interventions targeting the entire household.