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Market or Landscape Supply of Diverse Food
A supply of diverse foods in an area may indicate demand of diverse food by the population or the supply of diverse food by farmers. Collection of data on availability of diverse food at the market may provide an indication on the “accessibility of diverse and nutritious foods.”
How to operationalize the metric
Method of data collection and data needed to compute the method:
Data on the availability of foods at the market may be obtained from a “community survey” where data on the goods available at the market is collected. While standard community surveys are focused on enumerating the price of food items at the market, a modification of this survey may be done in collaboration with a nutritionist where data on various foods from different food groups is enumerated. These food groups may be similar to those used for calculation of dietary diversity or may be adjusted by the researcher as needed.
Unit of analysis:
The unit of analysis will be a simple count of the number of food items that are available at the market by food group. This may be done by classifying the foods available in the same food categories as those used for the dietary diversity score computation. This survey is best performed twice, once during the hunger season right before the harvest and, if possible, again right after the harvest to see the variation in availability.
Limitations regarding estimating and interpreting:
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