Fraval et al.Food Access Deficiencies in Sub-saharan Africa nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions. Interventions need to be tailored to agro-ecological zone, household composition, scale of operation and production mix. Increasing income will not necessarily result in improved diet diversity or healthy dietary choices. Interventions focused on income generation should monitor and promote crop and livestock production diversity and provide nutrition education.

Background The number of undernourished people and the risk of micro-nutrient deficiency remain high in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Decades of policy designed to reverse the trends of food insecurity have illustrated that the causal pathways of intervention to end-point outcomes, such as nutrition, are not necessarily straightforward. Utilising proxies for dimensions of food security, this study investigates the relative importance of different pathways to food security in two subtly contrasting communities in the Sahelian and Sudanian Savanna zones of Burkina Faso. Results In Yatenga province, approximately 31% of households were classified as ‘severely food insecure’ in the ‘lean’ period. In contrast, over 84% of households sampled in Seno province were classified as being ‘severely food insecure’ in the ‘lean’ period. There were statistically significant associations between food security indicators and off-farm income, farm income and production diversity. The source of income had significantly different associations with diet diversity in the two provinces. In Yatenga province, higher gross farm income in the absence of off-farm income was predicted to result in more diverse diets; in Seno province, however, gross farm income was only predicted to result in more diverse diets when households are also earning off-farm income. Conclusions Our analysis shows that households were most differentiated by income generating pathways to food security in the ‘lean’ period. This finding should not detract from the essential role played by home-produced foods in improving food security. Rather, market-orientated agriculture and production for home consumption, as shown by households in this study, can be combined as part of a more resilient livelihood strategy. Policy needs to be targeted towards agro-ecological conditions, as well as socioeconomic factors in order to facilitate improved on-farm income, farm resilience and off-farm employment opportunities.

the Rural Household Multiple Indicator Survey (RHoMIS) is a standardized farm household survey approach which collects information on 758 variables covering household demographics, farm area, crops grown and their production, livestock holdings and their production, agricultural product use and variables underlying standard socioeconomic and food security indicators such as the Probability of Poverty Index, the Household Food Insecurity access Scale, and household dietary diversity. these variables are used to quantify more than 40 different indicators on farm and household characteristics, welfare, productivity, and economic performance. Between 2015 and the beginning of 2018, the survey instrument was applied in 21 countries in Central America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The data presented here include the raw survey response data, the indicator calculation code, and the resulting indicator values. These data can be used to quantify on-and off-farm pathways to food security, diverse diets, and changes in poverty for rural smallholder farm households.

In West African Sahel, there has been an only limited intensification of the mixed crop and livestock systems due to many constraints faced by smallholder farmers including climate change, low use of external inputs, insecure land tenure, and low adoption of productivity-enhancing technologies. However, the growing demand for food caused by a rapidly growing population offers opportunities for intensification of farming systems in the region in view of the current low productivity. A study involving 400 households was carried out in two provinces (Seno and Yatenga) in Burkina Faso in the Sahelian zone of the country to characterize the intensification practices by smallholder farmers in mixed crop and livestock systems. Our results confirmed the advantage of intensification practices in terms of increased crop and livestock productivity which is critical to improving food security. Also, the results showed that access to extension services is an important determinant of adoption of intensification practices in both study sites, which reaffirmed the vital role of extension services in adoption of agricultural technologies. The results also showed strong differences in adoption of intensification practices between the two provinces driven by their divergent history of land use, even though both provinces fall in the same agro-ecological zone.

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