Title : Nutrition‑sensitive agriculture toolkit increases yields, market participation, and income among women farmers in Lesotho
Abstract:
The landlocked country of Lesotho in Africa is extremely prone to food insecurity due to various factors such as drought, challenging terrain, poverty, and a heavy reliance on imports, and consequently faces high rates of malnutrition. Although several measures have been advocated to alleviate the prevailing situation, a sustainable long-term approach is needed. Keeping this in view, we hypothesized that an intervention toolkit may improve agricultural output, income, food security, dietary intake, and nutritional knowledge among women farmers. In this randomized case-control study, two villages in Lesotho were selected, and a newly developed context-specific Sustainable Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture (SNSA) toolkit was implemented among two groups of women farmers (n = 126). Variables related to nutritional assessment and dietary intake were measured using globally accredited protocols, such as 24-hour dietary recall, and Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ). Agricultural output was measured in three phases, with iterative training provided at the beginning of each phase. After the intervention, women in the experimental group showed statistically significant improvements in agricultural output, market participation, income, food storage, and food processing compared to the control group, which did not receive the intervention. In particular, learning outcomes and agricultural output were found to improve progressively among the women farmers throughout the intervention period. However, the experimental group did not show any significant change in dietary intake after the intervention. Further evidence is needed to determine whether long-term interventions can modify dietary patterns among women farmers. More sustainable agricultural extension programs and nutrition education training are required to overcome food insecurity and malnutrition in vulnerable populations.
