Lifestyle nutritional survey report: Krachi, Sekyere East, West Gonja and Yendi District

Abstract

The Food Crops Development Project seeks to assist participating farmers in the eight project districts, to attain a higher income and improve their overall nutritional situation on a sustainable basis. As part of the means to achieve this objective, the FCDP has contracted the services of the Food Research Institute as the lead organisation to undertake the lifestyle nutritional survey component of the baseline studies in four remaining districts after successful completion of the surveys in the first four in 2002. This study was therefore undertaken to collect essential information about nutritional conditions of project beneficiaries and their dependents, which will serve as a benchmark for measuring project impact. Data from the studies were used to make recommendations for nutritional intervention in the project districts. Structured, semi-structured, objective measurements and relevant participatory data collection techniques were used to generate the requisite information on the lifestyle nutritional status of the people in the project districts. This included the use of questionnaires, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. Secondary data sources were also used where appropriate to generate information. For cost considerations, 5 households were purposively sampled from 20 households selected by the Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation staff for interviewing in each of the 20 randomly selected villages per district to avoid duplication of efforts. A total of 400 households were therefore covered in the four districts. The four FCDP districts where the study was conducted include Krachi in the Volta Region, Sekyere east in the Ashanti Region and West Gonja and Vendi districts in the Northern Region