Interdisciplinary approach to combat food and nutrition insecurity in rural resource-poor settings of Central Tanzania

Abstract

Rural resource-poor settings of central depend largely on crop and livestock production for the livelihood. Lack of diversity and adequate food is an important problem affecting a substantial number of communities in Tanzania especially children aged between six months and one year. Poultry and crop production interventions were part of the project titled “strengthening food and nutrition security through family poultry and crop integration in Tanzania and Zambia" that aimed at utilizing locally available resources to mitigate food and nutrition insecurity. Interdisciplinary approach to combat food and nutrition insecurity was conducted in Iwondo Ward located in Mpwapwa District in Dodoma Region, Tanzania. The crop production interventions were introduction of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and poultry production interventions were vaccination against Newcastle Disease (ND) based on vaccination calendar and good husbandry. The data in poultry and crop production were collected before introduction of the interventions as the baseline and after introduction of GAP and vaccination of chickens. The harvest of crops was increased as compared to baseline year. The yield of sorghum increased from 200 to 1206.5kg, sesame from 150 to 504kg, and green gram from 80 to 644kg per acre. The proportion of households experiencing hunger for two to three months declined from 58% during baseline to 16% in 2017.The proportion of households keeping chickens increased during the period 2016 to 2018, from 47.3% (n=280) to 82.1% (n=276). The average number of chickens raised by households also increased from 9 to 13, and the average flock structure comprising of chickens of different age categories also demonstrated an increase, adults, 3 to 5, growers, 3 to 4 and chicks, 2 to 4.Most households (89%) reported to provide sorghum, maize/maize bran and finger millet as additional feed to chickens. Adopting interdisciplinary interventions can assist to improve agricultural production and hence increase resilience to food and nutrition insecurity.