NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF FARM WOMEN IN ASPIRATIONAL DISTRICTS OF KERALA AND TAMIL NADU
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Date
2023
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ICAR-NDRI, KARNAL
Abstract
About two third of the labour in farming is constituted by women. Irrespective of their
degree of affluence, they provide 14 to 18 hours of productive physical labour every day.
Nutrition has notifying significance in case of farm women, because they have to bear and
rear children along with carrying out agricultural production activities. Hence the present
study focused on the nutritional status of farm women in aspirational districts of Kerala
and Tamil Nadu. The study was conducted in Wayanad, Virudhunagar and
Ramanathapuram districts, which were listed as aspirational districts by NITI Aayog.
From each aspirational district, two blocks were randomly selected. Two villages were
selected from each block randomly and 30 households having at least 2 milch animals and
cultivating in at least one crop season were selected from each village as respondents.
Thus the total sample size was 360 households. Nutritional status of farm women was
measured using Body Mass Index (BMI) (anthropometric measure). Household food
security was measured using Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (USAID, 2007), the
factors affecting nutritional status was determined using exploratory factor analysis
followed by multinomial regression. Behavioral intention to consume nutritious food was
studied using Likert type scale based on theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985) and
structural equation modeling was used for theory testing. A multi-lingual education
module (folder) was developed on diet and nutrition of farm women and its perceived
effectiveness was measured using the scale developed based on Guidelines for Pretesting
and Evaluating Communication Materials given by Ministry of Health, Zambia and
USAID, as it is cross country validated and reliability was high. Major findings of the
study were as follows: Majority of the households (~67%) experienced various levels of
food insecurity (moderate [35.83%] –mild [25.83%]-extreme level [5.28%]) and only 33
percent of the households were food secure. Majority of the respondents (59-95%) did not
experience severe food insecurity. There is a significant but weak relationship between
food security and nutritional status. All the three identified factors had significant
influence in the nutritional status of farm women in both the states and cumulatively
explained the variance in BMI up to 59 percentage. In both the states majority of the
respondents had medium intention to consume nutritious food, followed by high intention.
The model fit indicators shows that theory of planned behavior adequately predicts
behavioral intention. The effectiveness of the module was perceived as high by the
respondents in general. Hence the study reinforces the need for nutrition sensitive
extension approaches.