Household dietary diversity in rural households of Oromia Regional state, Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study

Household dietary diversity (HDD) is an important nutrition outcome measuring the economic ability of a household to access a variety of foods during a determined period. This paper examines the determinants of HDD among wheat dominated rural households of Sinana District, Oromia Regional State. Multi stage sampling procedure was used to select 384 sample households. Data were collected using structured survey questionnaire, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. Zerotruncated Poisson regression model was used to measure the determinants of HDD. The results show that almost all the respondents consumed food made from cereal and only 20.05, 10.16 and 7.29% of the household consumed egg, meat and fruits in previous seven days, respectively. On average household consumed 5.73 food groups. Further, the finding indicates that about 13.54, 50.52 and 35.94% of the participants were consumed low, medium and high dietary diversity level, respectively. Marital status, education level, participating in irrigation farming, membership of farmers cooperatives, farm size and Total Livestock Unit (TLU) positively affected HDD while distance to nearest market and remittances negatively influenced HDD. Therefore, stakeholders in the agricultural sector should promote and encourage crop diversification strategies, expand access to irrigation, introduce agricultural technologies to boost income of rural households and thus diversify their diet.