Dairy development & pastoralist women’s milk consumption

Animal milk contributes to diversity in women’s diets, especially among pastoral communities. There have been many large-scale dairy development projects in East Africa, but few examples of pro-poor dairy development based on collective action and focused on increasing milk production and consumption by women. The study “The effect of participation in a pro-poor dairy development project on milk consumption among reproductive age women in rural Tanzania” by Kathryn Mishkin et al, published in 2018 in the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development 18 (1): 12992–13008, is based on surveys of 272 women in a spectrum of sedentary to nomadic livestock-keeping households in the Morogoro and Tanga regions of Tanzania. It identified associations between project participation, socio-demographic and health characteristics, and milk consumption behaviour, i.e. whether and how often milk was consumed in the previous 24 hours. The study revealed that household participation in pro-poor dairy development was associated with increased milk consumption among both pastoralist (Maasai) and non-pastoralist women. The intervention appears to be improving household nutrition and health through higher consumption of milk.

DOI: 10.18697/ajfand.81.17200

Posted on 20 April 2018 in Pastoralism, Gender & Youth, Pastoralist Livelihoods & Nutrition