*3.3. Measures of Diversity*

We use several variables to measure farm production diversity and household food consumption diversity. With respect to farm production diversity, we use two indicators. The first is based on species count for both crops and livestock, as recommended by Last et al. [34] and used in several recent studies (see, for example, Jones et al. [3]; Pellegrini and Tasciotti [8]; Sibhatu et al. [9]). In this indicator, a household cultivating three crops (e.g., maize, sorghum and groundnuts) and keeping cattle only will have a crop-livestock count of 4. The second measure uses the number of food groups produced on the farm to generate production diversity scores. Based on our data, we use 9 food groups (cereals; roots, tubers and plantains; pulses, seeds and nuts; fruit; vegetables; fish; meat; eggs; and milk and dairy products). In this case, a household cultivating only maize, rice and sorghum will have a production diversity score of 1, because all crops belong to cereals. Conversely, if a household cultivates maize and groundnuts and keeps goats, the diversity score will be 3, as they fall under different food groups. This indicator addresses the fact that crops and livestock produced on a farm might have different nutritional functions and hence affect household food consumption diversity differently [35,36]. In general, these indicators are suitable for comparison among farms and regions [34] and also allow for a comprehensive analysis of a typical smallholder farm production, which, in most cases, integrates crops and livestock. Alternative indicators in the literature include (1) the Simpson's Index, which measures species diversity and accounts for both, species richness and evenness and (2) the modified Margalef species richness index [34,37]. However, the use of these indicators in the present analysis would limit the scope to crops only as both measures require land area in their computation. For household food consumption diversity, we also use two indicators. These are the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) and the Food Variety Score (FVS). Following Swindale and Bilinsky [38], HDDS is constructed from the number of different food groups consumed by a household in a specified reference period, in our case a 7-day period. We use 9 food groups as those used in the indicator for production diversity above. We also extend the HDDS indicator to capture household dietary patterns during planting, pre-harvest and post-harvest seasons. For this, households were asked how many days in a normal week they would eat foods from a certain food group for each season in the past year. Overall, although the HDDS does not measure dietary quality, it is widely used as an indicator of household economic access to a variety of foods [39]. On the part of the FVS, this indicator records the number of different food items eaten during a specified reference period [40]. A 7-day recall period is also used based on the previous normal week.
