Isaac Anane^{1, 2,}, Nie Fengying¹, Huang Jiaqi^{1, 3}

Children’s early year’s life is essential. Those who receive inadequate nutrition are more likely to suffer from sickness and death in the short term, contributing to behavioral disorders, poor cognitive development, and poor education performance. This paper assesses children’s dietary diversity, food groups, and nutrition adequacy with agro-ecological zone potentials. We used the 24-hour recall method, the newest national representative, a cross-sectional dataset from Ghana’s Demographic and health survey with broad coverage in all agro-ecological zones, and 2451 children aged 6-59 months old for the final analysis. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between food groups, adequate dietary diversity intake, and marginal effects were applied to estimate the magnitude of nutritional adequacy between different agro-ecological zones. We found that the average dietary diversity score for all food groups was low, 2.23 out of 7. Out of the total food consumed daily, the food group which constitutes the highest proportion are grains, roots, and tubers, with an average daily intake (45.6% to 49.6%), and the least are vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables (2.6% to 10.0%). The main results were that adequate dietary diversity intake decreased from the least affected climatic zone (12.7%) to the most vulnerable zones (1.7%). There is also a relationship between food groups, adequate dietary diversity, and agro-ecological zones. Implementing climate-smart agriculture, especially in areas prone to extreme climatic stress, will help reduce climate change effects, enhance sustainable food production, and provide adequate food supply and nutrition.

Agro-ecological zones, nutritional adequacy, dietary diversity, food groups, Ghana