Child Nutrition Outcomes of Market Participation of Smallholder Farmers in Central Ethiopia

One of the welfare indicators of the household is nutritional status of its members especially the children and women. Child nutritional status affected by household and village level characteristics’, and by governments policy towards smallholder farmers. The objective of this study was to identify and evaluate if there is significant difference in preschoolers' children nutritional outcomes of smallholder farmers at differing levels of market participation. The study used the 2009 ERHS data-set and 38 preschool children who were all the surveyed children in the dataset were included in the analysis. The result showed that 42% preschool children are stunted or too short for their age, 10% wasting or too thin for height, and 36.8% underweight. Moreover, the One-way-ANOVA result showed that farm households with high degree of market participation are better-off in child nutrition outcomes than those with low degree of participation. In order for commercialization of agriculture policies to have dramatic effects on improving health and reducing malnutrition, attention must be given to health, sanitation, and environmental issues as complementary components of agriculture policies and programs