PLOS ONE

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Regional differences in agricultural and

socioeconomic factors associated with farmer
household dietary diversity in India
Sukhwinder Singh ID1*, Andrew D. Jones2, Meha Jain3

1 Center for Chronic Disease Control, Public Health Foundation of India, Gurgaon, India, 2 School of Public
Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America, 3 School for Environmental and
Sustainability (SEAS), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America

* [email protected]
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a1111111111 Abstract
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This paper investigated whether there are any regional-level differences in factors associ-
ated with farmer household dietary diversity using the Food Consumption Score (FCS), in
two states of India: Haryana and Gujarat. Our results suggest that the factors associated
with farmer household dietary diversity were region-specific, with diverse drivers across dis-
OPEN ACCESS
tricts. For example, in Vadodara (Gujarat), farmers who had greater crop diversity and
Citation: Singh S, Jones AD, Jain M (2020) planted more cash crops had higher dietary diversity while large landholders in Bhavnagar
Regional differences in agricultural and
(Gujarat) had higher dietary diversity. In Karnal (Haryana), more educated farmer house-
socioeconomic factors associated with farmer
household dietary diversity in India. PLoS ONE 15 holds and those who cultivated large landholdings had higher dietary diversity while farmers
(4): e0231107. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. in Bhiwani (Haryana) who were more educated and sold more crops to market had higher
pone.0231107
dietary diversity. Thus, factors associated with FCS differed even within the same state.
Editor: William Joe, Institute of Economic Growth, These results suggest that in some regions of India, higher crop diversity and better educa-
INDIA
tion could improve farmer household dietary diversity. On the other hand, in some other
Received: November 16, 2019 regions, dietary diversity is best improved through the income generation pathway, where
Accepted: March 16, 2020 households that earn increased income from selling more crops were able to purchase
more diverse food from markets. Our study suggests that the drivers of household dietary
Published: April 16, 2020
diversity across rural India are complex and heterogeneous; thus, future policies and pro-
Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the
grams to improve farmer household nutrition should be tailored considering regional differ-
benefits of transparency in the peer review
process; therefore, we enable the publication of ences in the factors associated with household nutrition.
all of the content of peer review and author
responses alongside final, published articles. The
editorial history of this article is available here:
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231107 1. Introduction
Copyright: © 2020 Singh et al. This is an open Food insecurity or malnutrition is a global burden, with one in three people affected world-
access article distributed under the terms of the
wide. In fact, every country in the world is facing at least one form of malnutrition, while 123
Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
countries are facing a “triple burden” of energy and micronutrient deficiencies along with ris-
reproduction in any medium, provided the original ing rates of obesity [1,2,3]. Malnutrition is especially high in Southern Asia where about 281
author and source are credited. million people are undernourished (i.e. they have inadequate calorie intake relative to their
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are
nutritional needs). Nearly one-third of children in India are stunted, wasted, or underweight
within the paper and its Supporting Information while one-fifth of adults are overweight or obese. Further, one-fifth of men, and half of chil-
files. dren and women are anemic [4,5]. Reducing rural malnutrition, particularly child

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Funding: Specific grant numbers: IMMANA malnutrition, has been a main policy goal over the last decade [2]. For example, the Indian
169864-2013 Initials of authors who received each government passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013 to provide subsidized food
award: Sukhwinder Singh Funded the study: The
grains to poorer sections of society in an attempt to reduce malnutrition rates [6] The impacts
UK Department for International Development
(DFID) Initials of authors who received salary or of these efforts on malnutrition, however, are yet to be investigated [7]. In order for such poli-
other funding from commercial companies: cies to be effective, it is critical that they consider the socioeconomic and agricultural factors
Sukhwinder Singh URLs to sponsors websites: associated with improved household nutrition across regions.
https://immana.lcirah.ac.uk The funders had no Many studies have examined the agricultural (e.g. agricultural biodiversity, farm income)
role in study design, data collection and analysis,
and socioeconomic (e.g. family income, educational status, market integration) factors associ-
decision to publish, or preparation of the
manuscript.
ated with farmer household dietary diversity, one of the key indicators of household nutrition.
Jones [8], and Sibhatu and Qaim [9] did a meta-analysis of these studies and concluded that
Competing interests: We declare that no
agricultural biodiversity has a clear and consistent association with farmer household-and
competing interests exist.
individual dietary diversity in low- and medium- income countries although the magnitude of
this association was small. Further, Kumar et al. [10] and Das [11] showed that agricultural
production diversity and education attainment, respectively, are some of the major determi-
nants of household dietary diversity in India. Some other studies [12,13,14] reported that
higher farm incomes are significantly associated with improvements in farmer household die-
tary diversity. Similarly, socioeconomic drivers such as educational status and market integra-
tion were found to be more influential drivers of household dietary diversity than agricultural
biodiversity in Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi [15,16].
While many studies have examined the agricultural drivers and socio-economic of farm
household dietary diversity, few studies have identified the extent to which these drivers may
vary across regions within a given country or state. Yet, doing so is important given that the
studies that have examined this question have found regional differences in the drivers of die-
tary diversity. For example, Demeke et al. [17] and Ochieng et al. [18] found regional-level dif-
ferences in the factors associated with household dietary diversity in Kenya and Tanzania,
respectively. In addition, Parappurathu et al. [19] investigated food consumption patterns and
dietary diversity of farmers at the village-level across twelve villages in India and found a signif-
icant difference in dietary diversity across these villages, though this study did not consider the
drivers of dietary diversity. These studies suggest that there is likely not a universal pattern in
which factors influence dietary diversity and instead, the drivers of dietary diversity are likely
to be diverse and differ across regions.
To better understand how heterogeneous the drivers of rural household nutrition are across
India, this study investigated the association between agricultural and socioeconomic factors
and farmer household dietary diversity across districts in Gujarat and Haryana, two Indian
states with different crop production and food consumption patterns. We aim to understand
how agricultural and socioeconomic factors are associated with household dietary diversity,
and how these associations vary across districts in both states. Specifically, this study investi-
gates which agricultural and socioeconomic factors are associated with farmer household die-
tary diversity across districts within Gujarat and Haryana. This study has important
implications for regional policies that aim to improve farmer household dietary diversity in
rural India. Our work may help policy makers understand the regional-level differences in the
drivers of household dietary diversity in rural India, allowing for more tailor-made policies
and programs to improve household nutrition.

2. Material and methods

2.1. Study locations and sampling methodology
We selected two Indian states, Gujarat and Haryana (Fig 1), because these are the two states in
India where over 70% of rural households depend on agriculture and they vary significantly

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

considering crop and income diversity ([20,21,22]; www.esaharyana.gov.in; www.dag.gujarat.

gov.in). For instance, the average crop diversity in Gujarat was 0.73 compared with 0.70 in
Haryana. Gujarat, being a large state with a low availability of water for irrigation, could realize
cropping intensity of 57% only as compared to 133% in Haryana which is a small state but
with plenty of water available for irrigation (S1 and S2 Tables). Further, these states were also
quite divergent in terms of per capita livestock (0.21 v/s 0.36) and poultry (0.31 v/s 1.89%).
Thus, these states made an ideal case for a comparative study.
We sampled farmers across a gradient of low to high crop, farm, and income diversity
because we aimed to examine how agricultural and socioeconomic factors are associated with
farmer household dietary diversity. Therefore, we used secondary data on crops grown, live-
stock owned, and income generated from Indian census statistics. For that, we constructed a
‘Farming Intensity Index’ (FII: adapted from [23,24,25]) for each district in Gujarat (S1 Table)
and Haryana (S2 Table). This paper is based on the same field survey that I, as the first author,
used in my paper Singh et al. [23]. Thus, some contents of this paper, e.g. Material and Meth-
ods, and Descriptive and Summary Statistics may be similar to Singh et al. [23]. We calculated
FII using four major indicators of crop diversity (e.g. Crop Diversity Index-CDI: Section 2.4),
farm diversity (e.g. per capita livestock, and per capita poultry population), and farm income
(e.g. total cropped area as percent of total land area). Further, since previous literature con-
firms a strong relationship between household education and farmer household dietary diver-
sity [26,27,28], we included rural literacy rates, as a factor in FII. Then, we standardized these
figures and took the average of our measures of crop and income diversity to weight each of
these equally. We then summed these weighted values to obtain FII values using the following
formula:

X
n
X x�
FII ¼
i¼1
SD

where.
X = observed values of variable of interest,
x� = Mean of X,
SD = Standard Deviation of X,
n = Number of variables.
Based on these FII values, three districts were selected in each state (Fig 1): One district that
had an FII value close to the state average, one district that had one of the two highest FIIs
within each state, and one district that had one of the two lowest FII values within each state.
To ensure that the selected districts were spread across the state and were not next to one
another, we also considered spatial location of these districts (methods are the same as those
from Singh et al. [23]).
To maintain consistency, the same formula and methodology was used to select blocks
within each of these three districts in Gujarat and Haryana (S3 and S4 Tables). Due to the
unavailability of village-level data, we randomly selected three sets of villages within each block
while in the field. These village sets were: one set that was close to a city, one set that was close
to a highway, and one set that was far from both a city and a highway (Fig 2). This sampling
strategy ensured the inclusion of villages with varied income diversity because rural households
in villages that are closer to cities and highways are more likely to take part in non-agricultural
livelihoods, e.g. salaried professions or running a business. Two to three adjoining villages
formed each village set. Using purposive-cum-random sampling, approximately 30 farmer
households within each village set were selected. Surveys were conducted by visiting the selected
farm households at their home (methods are the same as those from Singh et al. [23]). A farmer

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Fig 1. A map of states, districts and blocks selected for this study in India (Fig from Singh et al. [23]).
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231107.g001

household here refers to a family directly engaged in farming, particularly crop production and
not necessarily owning any land. Those who rented or leased land from others were also
included. However, those, owning but not cultivating the land themselves were excluded.

2.2 Survey data collection

A structured survey schedule was prepared and data were collected using a mobile-based
application. Two separate teams of five female enumerators conducted the surveys in each
state during May-June 2017. Data related to crops grown, farm-related activities, income
sources, demographic information and food consumption were collected from the head of the
household, typically a male, and the main preparer of food, typically the wife of the male head
of the household. This survey was reviewed and approved by the Institution Review Board,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (IRB Approval Number: IRB00000246).

2.3. Household dietary diversity assessment

Farmer household dietary diversity can be assessed by computing the Food Consumption
Score (FCS). The Food Consumption Score (FCS) aggregates household-level data on the

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Fig 2. Sample distribution showing number of farmer households surveyed in each district and block in Gujarat and Haryana (Fig from Singh
et al. [23]).
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diversity and frequency of nine food groups (e.g. Main staples, Pulses, Vegetables, Fruit, Meat
and Fish, Milk, Sugar, Oil, and Condiments) consumed over the past week, which is then
weighted according to each group’s relative nutritional value. FCS can be further classified as
poor, borderline, or acceptable [29]. FCS is associated with caloric intake [30,31], but has not
been validated for nutrient adequacy [32].

2.4. Metrics constructed

2.4.1. Crop diversification index. The Crop Diversification Index (CDI) was calculated
for each farmer household surveyed using the 1-H formula, where H is Hirschman-Herfindahl
Index (HHI) measured as:
X
N
H¼ s2i
i¼1

where.
N is the total number of crops during 2016–17,
Si represents area proportion of the i-th crop in total cropped area.
H takes a value of 1 when there is a monoculture and approaches zero with increasing
diversity. Therefore, when using 1-H, a larger number indicates greater crop diversity [24,23].
The CDI was calculated using all crops grown during the whole year.
2.4.2. Family education index. The Family Education Index (FEI) for each farmer house-
hold was calculated by adding the education level of all adults and adolescents in a household
and dividing the resulting value by the number of all adults and adolescents.

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

2.4.3. Food consumption score. The Food Consumption Score (FCS) is the main mea-
sure of dietary quality at the household level recommended by the World Food Program [33].
As defined by the WFP [33], the consumption frequency of each of the food groups consumed
were multiplied by an assigned weight of each food group and the resulting values were added
to calculate the final FCS for each of the farmer households:
FCS = a staple x staple + a pulse x pulse + a veg x veg + a fruit x fruit + a meat x meat + a sugar x sugar + a
dairy x dairy + a oil x oil + a condiments x condiments
where.
FCS = Food Consumption Score;
xi = frequency of food consumption = number of days on which a food group was con-
sumed during the past 7 days; and.
ai = weight of each food group.
The assigned weights for each of the nine food groups were based on the energy, protein
and micronutrient densities of each of the food groups. These assigned weights were: 1. Main
staples-2; 2. Pulses-3; 3. Vegetables-1; 4. Fruit-1; 5. Meat and Fish-4; 6. Milk-4; 7. Sugar-0.5, 8.
Oil-0.5, and 9. Condiments-0.

2.5. Framework to examine associations

We ran regressions to examine the associations between various agricultural and socioeco-
nomic factors and farmer household dietary diversity across six districts of Gujarat and Hary-
ana in India. In these regressions, we used the following major independent variables:
2.5.1. Crop diversity index (CDI). Crop diversity in India is decreasing [20,21], which
affects farmer household dietary diversity, especially for those who are sustaining homegrown
food [9,15,16,34]. Thus, we decided to include CDI, as a factor, in our regressions.
2.5.2. Landholding size (in ha). A larger landholding size can improve household dietary
diversity by enabling a farmer household to produce more to consume more at home [9,34] as
well as to sell more to enhance income to buy more diverse food from market [12,14]. Thus, it
could be an important socioeconomic factor affecting dietary diversity in rural India.
2.5.3. Per capita annual income (PCAI). As increasing incomes generally result in
improved household dietary diversity [12,13,14], per capita family income was included in the
regressions.
2.5.4. Family education index (FEI). Many studies argue that education is an important
socioeconomic factor associated with household dietary diversity [18,26,27,28,35]; therefore,
family education was included in the regressions.
2.5.5. Distance traveled to food markets (Kms). As Jones et al. [36] and Koppmair et al.
[15] suggested market access and higher household dietary diversity are associated with each
other; therefore, we included this in our study. We used average distance traveled by farmers
to markets for vegetables, fruits, and pulses as a proxy for market access.
2.5.6. Crops sold (%). We found that most farmers in Gujarat and Haryana sell some part
of their agricultural production to markets (Table 1) and this increased income may improve
dietary diversity [12,13,14,37]. Thus, we included the average percent of crops sold to the mar-
ket for each farmer in our analyses.

2.6. Statistical models

The descriptive statistics of all of variables of interest across each district in two states were tab-
ulated to understand the variation in our variables across study sites. SPSS was used to create
all descriptive tables. We ran linear regressions for each of the six districts across two states
using R Project Software to identify the associations between agricultural (e.g. crop diversity,

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Table 1. Socioeconomic and agricultural profile of farmer households surveyed in Gujarat and Haryana.
Parameter/District/State Vadodara Bhavnagar Banas Gujarat Karnal Bhiwani Mewat Haryana Overall
Kantha
Sample Size (n) 193 177 183 553 186 181 186 553 1106
Socioeconomic Profile
Farmer Age (years) 45 (12.90) 46 (14.44) 42 13.46) 45 (13.66) 42 43 (13.60) 41 42 (14.19) 43 (13.97)
(13.81) (15.05)
Average Farmer Household Size (#) 6.9 (3.04) 8.0 (3.36) 6.4 (2.36) 7.1 (3.01) 6.1 (2.52) 6.6 (2.74) 8.8 (3.78) 7.2 (3.27) 7.1 (3.14)
Farmer Household Education (per capita) 7.4 (2.20) 6.2 (2.21) 6.0 (2.50) 6.6 (2.39) 7.6 (2.25) 7.7 (2.37) 5.1 (2.76) 6.8 (2.74) 6.6 (2.57)
Family Members Engaged in Agriculture (% of 79 (25.65) 87 (22.08) 83 (23.54) 83 (24.00) 94 89 (20.14) 92 92 (17.50) 88 (21.41)
total members) (15.27) (16.58)
Average Farmer Household Annual Income $2,950 $2,336 $2,727 $2,677 $525 $466 $551 $514 $1,593
from all sources (in US$) (4028) (2631) (3191) (3354) (366) (737) (606) (589) (2634)
Income from Farming (% of total household 62 (29.48) 72 (26.13) 56 (24.72) 63 (27.65) 87 86 (21.84) 77 83 (24.12) 73 (26.86)
income) (22.04) (26.84)
Agricultural Profile
Landholding Size (in ha) 2.9 (3.9) 3.6 (3.6) 2.8 (2.6) 3.1 (3.5) 2.5 (3.0) 2.6 (2.2) 1.3 (1.7) 2.1 (2.9) 2.6 (3.0)
Cropping Intensity (%) 125 (55.93) 109 (38.09) 133 (72.39) 122 (58.14) 205 195 202 200 162 (59.69)
(25.07) (17.32) (33.35) (26.40)
Crop Diversity Index (CDI) 0.48 (0.24) 0.37 (0.27) 0.63 (0.23) 0.49 (0.27) 0.56 0.68 0.62 0.62 0.56 (0.21)
(0.07) (0.09) (0.11) (0.11)
Average Crops Sold (%) 57 (38.41) 60 (30.33) 50 (25.69) 56 (32.29) 50 53 (19.64) 46 50 (22.79) 53 (28.08)
(23.98) (23.95)
Distance to Food Markets (kms) 4.9 (4.45) 6.4 (6.18) 7.9 (5.00) 6.4 (5.37) 2.6 (2.45) 3.5 (3.49) 3.5 (2.28) 3.2 (2.81) 4.8 (4.57)
Milk kept for domestic use (%) 39 (28.57) 52 (29.22) 26 (25.00) 37 (29.38) 62 70 (31.94) 68 67 (32.51) 54 (34.37)
(34.32) (31.05)

Figures in parenthesis represent Standard Deviation (SD) for respective mean values.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231107.t001

landholding size, farm income and crops sold) and socioeconomic (e.g. family income, family
education, distance to food markets and consumption of domestically produced milk) factors,
and FCS. All continuous independent variables were normalized by the mean and standard
deviation to make coefficient values comparable across all independent variables. We calcu-
lated variable inflation factors (VIFs) for each regression and found no evidence of multi-col-
linearity (VIF < 1.2) among independent variables used. Further, to reduce the effect of
location on our results, we included block fixed effects in all regressions.

3. Results
3.1 Descriptive and summary statistics
3.1.1. Socioeconomic profile. A typical farmer (male respondent) was in his 40s with the
youngest on average in Mewat (41 years), Haryana and the oldest on average in Bhavnagar (46
years), Gujarat. Farmers in Gujarat (45 years) were significantly older than those in Haryana
(43 years). An average farmer household had about seven members in both Gujarat and Hary-
ana. Considering family education, per capita farmer household education (Total years of edu-
cation of all adult members/number of adult members) was 6.6 years both in Gujarat and
Haryana. Approximately 92% of members of a typical farmer household in Haryana and 83%
of members of a typical farmer household in Gujarat were engaged in agricultural activities
directly or indirectly. As 17% of Gujarat’s farmer households were taking part in non-farming
occupations, the mean annual farmer household income in Gujarat ($2,655) was much higher
than for those farming in Haryana ($514). A lower average income among farmers in Haryana

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

could be because they largely grow non-cash crops (i.e. wheat and rice) and sell them to gov-
ernment agencies at a minimum support price (MSP, a central government policy in India
that ensures a minimum price given to farmers for 24 major crops; [38]). These differences
may also be due to inaccurate self-reports of income across both states, with more farmers
underreporting their farm incomes in Haryana. More than 70% of income of a farmer house-
hold came from farming, with 63% in Gujarat and 83% in Haryana.
3.1.2. Agricultural profile. About 95% of farmers in both states were small or medium
landholders cultivating less than 10 hectares (ha) of land. More than half of farmers in Gujarat
and two-third of farmers in Haryana were small and marginal landholders cultivating less than
2 ha. The average landholding size was 2.6 ha (Table 1), with the largest amount of land owned
in Bhavnagar, Gujarat and the smallest amount of land owned on average in Mewat, Haryana.
High standard deviation (SD) across all districts shows that landholding distribution was
uneven in both states. Although farmers in Haryana cultivated smaller landholding sizes on
average (2.1 ha) compared to farmers in Gujarat (3.1 ha), cropping intensity was much higher
in Haryana than Gujarat (200% vs 122%) and crops planted were more diversified in Haryana
compared to Gujarat (0.62 vs 0.49). In Gujarat, cropping intensity and CDI were estimated as
the lowest on average in Bhavnagar (CI: 109; CDI: 0.37) and the highest on average in Banas
Kantha (CI: 133%; CDI: 0.63). Farmers on average reported selling 53% of the total crop pro-
duced, with the highest in Bhavnagar (60%) and the lowest in Mewat (46%). Considering aver-
age distance travelled to purchase food, farmers in Gujarat traveled farther (6.4 kms) than
farmers in Haryana (3.2 km) on average. Approximately two-thirds of farmers sold milk in
Gujarat whereas only one-thirds of farmers sold milk in Haryana. This is likely due to well-
organized and privately managed milk markets in Gujarat.
3.1.3. Farmer household dietary diversity. The average FCS (Table 2) of a typical farm-
ing household was 67, with the highest in Vadodara (73) and the lowest in Bhiwani (63). The
standard deviation of FCS suggests that variation in consumption patterns was higher in Guja-
rat districts as compared to districts in Haryana. Further, using the World Food Program’s cat-
egorization of FCS scores [33], all of the farmer households across all six districts in both states
were categorized as “Poor”, “Borderline” and “Acceptable” (S5 Table) to see their vulnerability
in terms of FCS cutoffs defined by WFP [33]. However, the results suggest that most of the
farmer households (98%) fell into the “Acceptable” category. Only 1% of farmer households in
one district of Gujarat (e.g. Banas Kantha) fell into the “Poor” category though 1–2% of farmer
households across all districts in both states were “Borderline” cases. Considering total food
groups consumed, on average farming households ate food from eight out of total nine food
groups, though there was a variation in this number across districts.
All farming households across all districts in both states consumed main staples, while
pulses and vegetables were consumed by all farmer households in Karnal and Mewat districts
of Haryana. Most farmer households (97–100%) were consuming milk, sugar, oil and condi-
ments across all districts in both states. Meat and fish was the food group that was consumed
by the fewest households (13%) though its consumption was relatively higher in Haryana (21)
because Mewat is a Muslim-dominated district where fewer people were vegetarian. Similarly,
14% of farmer households in Vadodara, which is also a Muslim-dominated region, consumed
meat and fish. Fruit consumption in Bhiwani (76%) was relatively lower than the respective
state (87%) and overall average (90%).
Considering weekly consumption frequency for each of the nine food groups, each farmer
household across all districts was consuming staples, milk, sugar, oil and condiments almost
each day of the week when our survey was conducted. However, consumption frequencies
were lower for fruit, and meat and fish, although they were comparable across all districts in

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Table 2. Farmer household dietary diversity profile of farmer households surveyed in Gujarat and Haryana.

Parameter/District/State Vadodara Bhavnagar Banas Gujrat Karnal Bhiwani Mewat Haryana Overall
kantha
Food Consumption Score (FCS) and Standard Deviation (in 73 (10.45) 71 (8.51) 64 (9.71) 69 65 63 65 64 (7.62) 67
parenthesis) (10.28) (8.48) (7.83) (6.21) (9.39)
Number of Food groups consumed (#) 8.0 7.9 7.8 7.9 8.0 7.7 8.4 8.0 8.0
Food groups consumed (%) and their consumption frequency (in parenthesis) during the preceding week of survey
Food Group 1: Main staples 100 (6.7) 100 (6.9) 100 (6.7) 100 (6.8) 100 100 100 100 (7.0) 100
(7.0) (7.0) (7.0) (6.9)
Food Group 2: Pulses 99 (5.1) 99 (4.8) 96 (3.0) 98 (4.3) 99 (3.1) 99 (2.8) 100 99 (2.7) 99 (3.5)
(2.1)
Food Group 3: Vegetables 99 (5.9) 99 (5.9) 99 (5.9) 99 (5.9) 100 99 (4.7) 100 100 (5.0) 99 (5.5)
(5.0) (5.3)
Food Group 4: Fruit 94 (3.7) 93 (3.1) 93 (2.5) 93 (3.1) 94 (3.1) 76 (2.5) 90 (2.1) 87 (2.6) 90 (2.9)
Food Group 5: Meat and fish 14 (1.8) 2 (1.2) 2 (1.3) 6 (1.3) 8 (1.0) 2 (1.5) 53 (1.3) 21 (1.2) 13 (1.3)
Food Group 6: Milk 96 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 97 (7.0) 97 (7.0) 97 (7.0) 97 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 98 (7.0) 98 (7.0)
Food Group 7: Sugar 99 (7.0) 100 (7.0) 98 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 100 100 100 (7.0) 100
(7.0) (7.0) (7.0)
Food Group 8: Oil 100 (7.0) 100 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 100 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 100
(7.0)
Food Group 9: Condiments 100 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 100 97 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0) 99 (7.0)
(7.0)

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both states. Interestingly, the consumption frequency of pulses shows large variations not only
across states but also across districts within both states.

3.2. Factors associated with FCS

While looking at these associations at the district level (Table 3), the factors associated with
FCS vary drastically across regions within both states. For instance, in Gujarat, crop diversity
was associated with FCS in Vadodara (p < 0.05), whereas, in Bhavnagar, landholding size
(p < 0.05) was positively associated with FCS while crops sold (%) had a negative association
with FCS (p < 0.05) here. In Banas Kantha, no factor was associated with FCS.
In Haryana, crop diversity (p < 0.01) and landholding size (p < 0.01) were significantly
associated with FCS in Karnal while in Bhiwani, family education (p < 0.01) and crops sold to
market (p < 0.05) had a significant positive association with FCS. No factor was significantly
associated with FCS in Mewat where farmer households had a higher FCS (65) on average
compared to the state (64) and consumed the highest number of food groups (8.4 out of 9
against the overall average of 8: Table 2). There was also less variation in FCS across house-
holds as evidenced by a smaller standard deviation; this could be due to the fact that the main
community of this region (i.e. Muslim) might have followed similar food consumption pat-
terns. To control for sub-district effects on dietary diversity, all of the above district regressions
were run with block fixed effects.

4. Discussion
Using primary data collected from 1106 households from Gujarat and Haryana, this study
investigated the regional differences in which socioeconomic and agricultural factors are asso-
ciated with household dietary diversity (measured using the FCS) in India. Interestingly, the
factors associated with FCS varied across districts in both states. In some regions, agricultural
and market factors, such as crop diversity, and percent of crops sold to the market, were the

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Table 3. Regression results showing the agricultural and socioeconomic factors associated with Food Consumption Score (FCS) across districts within Gujarat and
Haryana.
Food Consumption Score (FCS)
Gujarat Haryana
Vadodara Bhavnagar Banas Kantha Karnal Bhiwani Mewat
Crop Diversity Index (CDI) 0.233�� 0.098 -0.060 0.700��� -0.098 0.154
(0.095) (0.081) (0.085) (0.205) (0.167) (0.121)
Landholding Size (in ha) -0.134 0.131�� 0.064 0.198��� 0.141 0.040
(0.103) (0.066) (0.083) (0.071) (0.102) (0.145)
Per Capita Annual Income (PCAI) 0.095 0.018 0.048 0.983 -0.021 0.376
(0.089) (0.114) (0.070) (0.501) (0.178) (0.365)
Family Education Index (FEI) 0.151 -0.064 0.118 0.040 0.233��� 0.034
(0.153) (0.102) (0.084) (0.082) (0.073) (0.056)
Distance to Food Markets (Kms) -0.009 0.102 0.053 0.268 0.101 0.087
(0.123) (0.061) (0.067) (0.153) (0.085) (0.109)
Crops Sold to Market (%) 0.024 -0.191�� 0.116 -0.203 0.239�� -0.028
(0.106) (0.086) (0.090) (0.104) (0.102) (0.074)
Milk kept for Domestic use (%) 0.018 -0.049 0.010 0.057 -0.130 -0.011
(0.116) (0.099) (0.097) (0.081) (0.070) (0.062)
Observations 106 106 148 153 152 166
R2 0.247 0.284 0.134 0.213 0.139 0.038
Adjusted R2 0.185 0.225 0.085 0.169 0.091 -0.011
Residual Std. Error 0.997 0.788 0.813 0.843 0.770 0.687
Sample Size (n) 98 98 140 145 144 158
Block Fixed Effects Y Y Y Y Y Y

Significance codes
��
p < 0.05;
���
p < 0.01

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factors that were significantly related to FCS. In other regions, socioeconomic factors, such as
landholding and education level, were associated with FCS. These results highlight that the fac-
tors associated with FCS are diverse and heterogeneous, suggesting that policies to improve
household nutrition in rural India may be more effective if they are targeted to specific regions
of interest. We will now examine the results for each district in detail, and explain the potential
reasons for these differences based on additional information from our survey data, qualitative
discussions that we had with farmers in each region, and our knowledge of the social and mar-
ket context of each district.
First, considering districts in Gujarat, crop diversity (CDI) was the only factor that was sig-
nificantly associated with FCS in Vadodara. Farmers who planted a more diverse set of crops
had a higher household FCS, suggesting that increased crop diversity is associated with
improved household nutrition in this region. These results occurred because of the specific
cropping and livelihood patterns seen in Vadodara. Vadodara has a relatively high cropping
intensity and crop diversity (Cropping intensity = 125%; CDI = 0.48: Table 1) compared to the
other two districts of Gujarat in our survey. Yet, the crops that were typically grown were pri-
marily cash crops (66% of the cropped area was under cash crops including cotton, sugarcane
and tobacco) that were sold to the market (57% of the crops farmers grew were sold to market:
Table 1). In addition, farmers in Vadodara had a larger share of their annual income (38%;
Table 1) coming from non-farm sources. The reliance on cash crops and non-farm incomes

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

may explain why this region had higher annual incomes ($2950; Table 1) compared to farmers
from the other two districts in Gujarat. Our results suggest that an increased diversity of crops,
primarily cash crops, that are increasingly sold to the market are associated with improved die-
tary diversity in this relatively prosperous and market-oriented district of Gujarat.
For Bhavnagar (Gujarat), landholding size and the proportion of crops sold to markets
were significantly associated with FCS. Previous studies suggest that a larger landholding size
can improve household dietary diversity [9,34] by increasing income, which may allow farmers
to buy more diverse food from markets [12,14]. In addition, by having larger landholdings,
farmers were able to plant a more diverse range of crops on farm (there is a positive significant
relationship between landholding size and crop diversity in this district, p < 0.01). Interest-
ingly, the association between the proportion of crops sold to markets and FCS was opposite
of what we hypothesized; in this region, farmers who sell more crops to the market are more
likely to have lower FCS. It is possible that farming households that sell a higher proportion of
their crops to market are more dependent on purchased food for consumption. If local mar-
kets do not commonly offer diverse foods, or if these foods are too expensive for low-income
households, dependency on market purchased foods may limit dietary diversity [34]. In Bhav-
nagar, the consumption of several diverse food items (e.g., fruits, meat and fish; Table 2) that
are not commonly cultivated or reared, but rather are purchased, was low. As per our discus-
sions with farmers in this area, the availability of meat items from local markets was limited in
Bhavnagar and if they were available, they were very expensive because most non-Muslim
communities in this region prefer eating vegetarian food.
In Banas Kantha, Gujarat, no factors considered in our study were significantly associated
with FCS. Relatively, the adjusted R2 of the linear regression for this region was also much
smaller than the adjusted R2 of the other district models in Gujarat (0.085; Table 3). This sug-
gests that we may not have captured the factors in our survey that could be more important in
explaining dietary diversity in Banas Kantha because this region appears to be least reliant on
farming for their livelihoods, with only 56% of the average farmer’s income coming from farm-
ing (Table 1). It is therefore possible that there are non-farm factors that are important in
explaining FCS, such as consumer behavior and the availability of diverse food items from
markets, that we did not consider in our study.
Considering districts in Haryana, in Karnal, crop diversity and landholding size were posi-
tively and significantly associated with FCS. The importance of crop diversity in this region
may be because households here were heavily dependent on farming, with 94% of family mem-
bers engaged in farming and with 87% of annual income coming from farming (Table 1).
Crop diversity may be particularly important in this region given that the majority of food
grain crops grown in this area are procured on assured price (i.e. MSP) by the government,
and there is subsequently less crop diversity in this region compared to other two districts in
Haryana. Given farmers’ reliance on farming as a primary livelihood, and given that there is
overall low crop diversity, it is possible that those farmers who grow more diverse crops on
farm end up having higher dietary diversity. In addition, large landholders have more crop
production, resulting in increased crop income, and they also are able to plant more diverse
crops since they do not have limitations due to land. This may result in more diverse diets
both through increased diversity of foods produced on farm and more income to purchase
foods from the market.
In Bhiwani, Haryana, increased levels of education and selling more crops to the market
were associated with improved FCS. This may be because Bhiwani is the poorest district of all
of the ones considered in our study, with households on average earning $466 per year. In
addition, this community is heavily dependent on farming, with 86% of annual income com-
ing from farming (Table 1). Finally, this is also the district where households consumed the

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

least amount of fruit, with only 76% of households consuming fruit 2.5 times in the preceding
week of survey (Table 2). In this region, through discussions with farmers, we found that most
fruit that households consumed was purchased from market. Therefore, in this community
that is heavily-dependent on farming, earning income from selling crops may be the most via-
ble way to access additional food groups, such as fruit, that must be purchased from markets.
Finally, in Mewat (Haryana), no variables in our regressions were significantly associated
with FCS, and the adjusted R2 of our model was negative (-0.011), the lowest across all districts
(Table 3). Our inability to detect any significant factors may be because the overall FCS was
high in this region (farmer households here consumed 8.4 out of total 9 food groups in the pre-
ceding week of survey) and had low variation (Mean = 65; SD = 6.21; Table 2). This lack of var-
iation in FCS may be because most members of the community are Muslims and may have
similar eating patterns; specifically, in this region eating non-vegetarian food items is common
and ultimately increases FCS. In addition, similar to Banas Kantha, farmers earned the least
amount of income from farming in this district (77% of income came from farming) com-
pared to the other districts in Haryana. This suggests that there may be some non-agricultural
variables that are important explanatory factors for FCS in this less farming-dependent region
that we did not consider in our study.
Overall, our findings suggest that farmer household dietary diversity in rural India is associ-
ated with a variety of agricultural and socioeconomic factors. Importantly, we find that which
factors are significantly associated with FCS vary across districts even within the same state,
suggesting that the drivers of dietary diversity may be region-specific. Our results suggest that
future agricultural and socioeconomic policies that aim to increase dietary diversity in India
may benefit from considering regional differences in the drivers of dietary diversity associated
with social and economic contexts. These policies should consider the reality of the farming
communities on the ground, and understand that there are heterogeneous drivers of decision-
making and food access based on the location where a farming household lives.
It is important to note that this study has several limitations. First, some of our results are
correlational and based on observation data, and therefore are not causal. Future work should
follow the same farmers through time to collect panel data to better understand how changes
in agricultural and socioeconomic variables within a given household influence changes in die-
tary diversity. In addition, we only collected dietary data from one time point within a year.
Specifically, we focused our survey during the summer season when farmers are less likely to
be growing crops and therefore may be more food insecure. Future work should examine how
these results vary if dietary information is collected in different seasons across a year. Finally,
we did not collect data on how much of the food that the respondents consumed was home
grown or purchased from market. This would have allowed us to better understand whether
farmers’ dietary diversity was being driven more by what was grown on farm or through
income generation that allowed farmers to purchase diverse food from market. Future work
should tease apart this important distinction to better understand the mechanisms underpin-
ning the associations seen in this study.

5. Conclusions
Using primary data collected from 1106 farmer households in India, this paper investigated
the regional differences in socioeconomic (family education, income, distance to food markets,
and milk kept for domestic purpose) and agricultural (crop diversity, landholding size, crops
sold to market) factors associated with farmer household dietary diversity in India. Our results
found that the factors associated with FCS were region-specific across and within each of the
two states. In some regions, higher crop diversity and better education could improve farmer

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

household dietary diversity, and in other regions, dietary diversity is best improved through
income generation where farmers were able to purchase more diverse foods from markets
using the income they earned from selling their crops to market. In conclusion, our results
highlight that the factors associated with improved household nutrition are heterogeneous and
vary across regions even within the same state. This suggests that future agricultural and socio-
economic policies should consider regional-level variation in the drivers of household dietary
diversity by understanding local social and economic contexts.

Supporting information
S1 Table. Calculation of a district-wise Farming Intensity Index (FII) for Gujarat.
(DOCX)
S2 Table. Calculation of a district-wise Farming Intensity Index (FII) for Haryana.
(DOCX)
S3 Table. Calculation of a block-wise Farming Intensity Index (FII) for districts in Gujarat.
(DOCX)
S4 Table. Calculation of a block-wise Farming Intensity Index (FII) for districts in Hary-
ana.
(DOCX)
S5 Table. Number of farmer households falling under “Poor”, “Borderline” or “Accept-
able” FCS categories.�
(DOCX)

Acknowledgments
We are indebted to Professor William Masters (Tufts University, Boston, USA) for his help
and guidance during conceptualizing and designing the research methodology for this study.
We are also thankful to our colleagues, Dr. Preeti Rao and Dr. Nishan Bhattarai (University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA) for their valuable inputs at various stages of this project. Last but
not the least, we are sincerely grateful to respondents who spared so much time to participate
in the field survey, and enumerators who helped us collect data during a hot summer season.

Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Sukhwinder Singh, Meha Jain.
Data curation: Sukhwinder Singh.
Formal analysis: Sukhwinder Singh.
Funding acquisition: Sukhwinder Singh.
Investigation: Sukhwinder Singh.
Methodology: Sukhwinder Singh, Andrew D. Jones, Meha Jain.
Project administration: Sukhwinder Singh, Meha Jain.
Resources: Sukhwinder Singh.
Software: Sukhwinder Singh.
Supervision: Meha Jain.

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PLOS ONE farmer household dietary diversity in India

Writing – original draft: Sukhwinder Singh.

Writing – review & editing: Sukhwinder Singh, Andrew D. Jones, Meha Jain.

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