Dietary diversity became a global concern in improving health conditions through the habit of food group consumption by adding health dimension to the issue of food calorie consumption. Access to nutritionally adequate and good quality diet is essential to human health, productivity and work output. However, despite the various concerns by governments all over the world on ensuring that every household can at least provide three square meals per day, food insecurity continues to be a major development problem across the globe. This study assessed the effect of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on households’ dietary diversity in Jos Metropolis, Plateau State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 265 households. Data was collected using well-structured questionnaire. The analytical techniques were; Descriptive statistics, Dietary Diversity index and Z-Statistics Test. Gender, age, household size, education, marital status, cooperative membership and access to credit were the socioeconomic characteristics described. Result indicate that 86% of the households had low food dietary diversity while 14% of the households had high food dietary diversity before and after the pandemic lockdown. Similarly, 18% of the households had low calorie consumption while 82% of the households had high dietary diversity before and after the pandemic lockdown. Cereals, legumes/grains, oils/fat, roots and tubers, sugar and honey and meats were the most common food consumed by the households daily before and after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Result further indicate that the pandemic lockdown had effect on the dietary diversity and food consumption patterns of the urban households. It can be concluded that the understanding of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on dietary diversity and food consumption patterns of households is important in developing policy measures such as social safety nets, home feeding programmes, the school feeding programme, conditional cash transfers schemes and improved marketing channels that will help mitigate against households falling into food insecurity during similar pandemic in the future.

This study examined the nexus between cluster farming and household dietary diversity among smallholder wheat farmers in Oromia region, Ethiopia. Three-stage sampling procedures were employed to gather data from 384 household heads on a cross-sectional survey that was carried out in June 2022. Descriptive statistics and a binary logistic regression model were used for data analysis. The average, minimum, and maximum household dietary diversity scores were 7.10, 1, and 11, respectively. A significant difference was observed: participants in cluster farming had 14% more dietary diversity than their counterparts. Sex, marital status, participation in wheat cluster farming, home gardening, off-farm income, number of crops grown, cooperative membership, and access to training determined household dietary diversity. The study indicates that dietary diversity in households is influenced by a variety of factors. While wheat cluster-based farming is heavily promoted, household food and nutrition security also need to consider other elements like home gardening, off-farm income, cooperative membership, and training access.