Farm production diversity and its influence on diet quality: Evidence from South Eastern Kenya

Agriculture nutrition linkages have long been recognized as a viable pathway of attaining food and nutrition security. even though this recognition has started to influence research on agricultural development only more recently. However, these insights have only started to influence mainstream thinking on agricultural development only more recently and the empirical in rural sub-Saharan Africa is non-conclusive requiring more research. This study evaluates the relationship between farm production diversity and dietary quality in two semi-arid counties of lower eastern Kenya. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select 831 smallholder farmers in September 2021 and a Poisson regression model employed in the analysis. Farmers in Machakos and Makueni Counties grew an average of five and six crop species respectively and kept three livestock breeds. On the average, households consumed seven food groups out of 12 and the household dietary diversity scores were not significantly different between the two Counties. All the measures of farm production diversity had positive significant associations with diet diversity scores, a proxy for diet quality, except for women. The estimates were consistent when using food consumption scores as an alternative for robustness check implying that the results are reliable. Thus, development initiatives targeting to improve rural household diets should be pro-farm diversification since it is a viable pathway of improving household diet quality for rural households.