Interviews

Farmers (men and women)

Food purchasers

Teachers

Food preparers

Local leaders

Market economist

Local nutritionists

Agricultural extension agents

NGO workers

Ministry of Health officials

Religious workers

Ministry of Education

Women's groups

Ministry of Rural Development

Midwives

Ministry of Agriculture officials

Storekeepers and intermediary agents

Published data

FAD/WHO/UNICEF publications

Food balance sheets

Private voluntary organizations' publications

National and regional data sets

Health studies

Data compiled by other donors

Consumption survey data

Existing survey data

Household expenditure survey data

Project documents

Other data

Unpublished survey data

Project survey

Rapid reconnaissance

Key informant survey

Photographs of children and routine activities

Field trip(s)

Nutrition

1 What are the major nutrition problems of the area?

2 What are the contributing factors to the nutrition problems (geographic area, farming system, poverty, labour, land, policies, infection, food supply, women's time, cultural/religious factors, etc.)?

3 Who are the nutritionally vulnerable? Is vulnerability related to gender, age, landholding or ethnic group?

4 Are there seasonal dimensions to nutrition problems? (A nutritional stress calendar laying out food availability and nutrition over time might be a helpful tool.)

Forest and tree resources

1 Who uses and to what end are the forests and trees used (food production, income generation, fuelwood, etc.)?

2 Are there limitations in terms of access to forest and tree resources?

3 Do access restrictions have a more serious effect on food supply or nutrition during particular seasons?

4 If fuelwood is collected, who collects it and what is the estimated fuel collection time?

5 Does fuelwood supply limit the number of meals cooked a day or limit the time available to women or men for other activities?

6 What food processing/preservation or income generating activities require fuelwood?

Food

1 What are the most common forest foods consumed (classified by season)?

2 Who eats them?

3 Are they consumed for snacks or meals?

4 What is the nutrient content of these foods?

5 What is the food storage capacity and what are the storage methods?

6 What are strategies during periods of food scarcity (reduce the number/size of meals in a day, reduce food consumption, use more gathered foods, use more snack foods, purchase greater amounts of food, borrow from neighbors/relatives, borrow from other sources, go to the city in search of wage employment, etc.)?

7 What is the duration of food-scarce periods and when do they happen (for humans and animals)?

Income

1 Who is employed in forestry or earns money from forest/tree products or processing?

2 What forestry products are traded?

3 Do they vary by season?

4 What products are used by small-scale enterprises or for processing?

5 When are the cash need periods?

6 Are some forest products sold to obtain cash for the purchase of basic foods?

7 Are there periodic shortages of these products?

8 Are there community property regimes that regulate the exploitation of these products?

Living environment

1 Is clean water available?

2 Do water sources contain disease-carrying vectors?

3 Is housing adequate? Are there sanitation facilities?

Women's time

1 What do women spend their time doing?

2 What do they want to be spending their time doing?

3 How much time do women spend at major tasks (farming, trading, income earning, child care, etc.)?

Health/Infection

1 What are the major health and infection problems in the area?

2 Are there medicines derived from trees and forests that can alleviate these problems?

Community input

1 What do community members say about the nature and importance of wild foods?

2 What do the residents say about food related problems?

3 Do they identify constraints in availability/scarcity of specific food items?

Food and fodder supply

1 Carefully select and plant trees and shrubs to supply food with needed nutrients and to contribute to diet diversity.

2 Include food for work schemes in a multidisciplinary forestry project where food supplies are inadequate and project goals help address long-term food supply issues.

3 Incorporate forest food, fodder, and medicine producing trees into farming systems in such management schemes as border plantings and hedgerows.

4 Provide seedlings and plant bushes or trees that provide snack foods.

5 Provide an alternative source of food during drought or periods of stress.

6 Measure seasonality and select locally valued trees that provide food during hunger periods.

7 Use building materials from the forest to construct crop storage containers.

8 Compensate the community for possible negative factors (eg. keep livestock away from fields while trees are young, perhaps by providing fodder trees for fodder banks).

Income

1 Develop small-scale forest-based industries to provide income.

2 Locate forest product processing facilities nearby (to provide employment).

3 Provide support that encourages local people to sell fruits, mushrooms and other forest materials.

4 Create compensatory programs during periods when trees generate costs but no benefits (eg. food for work).

Environment

1 Create wind breaks that serve multiple functions (eg. with edible fruits or seeds).

2 Create clean water sources as part of nurseries placed.

3 Manage molluscicides and natural coagulants from tree products.

4 Increase the supply of or access to raw materials for housing.

Women

1 Develop methods to increase women's available time for income-generating activities by supplying nearby woodlots (which can lead to increases in income and enhanced nutritional status).

2 Select low labour input species.

3 Incorporate local women into the decision-making process. Form user groups, cooperatives or farmer associations.

Health

1 Provide health education if the project increases the prevalence of disease-carrying vectors.

2 Increase the availability of forest/tree derived medicines.

3 Increase the availability of fuelwood.

Assessing changes in the quality of the diet

1 Frequency of meals and snack foods

2 Number of meals reheated, dishes saved but not reheated before eating

3 Diet diversity (range of foods used over the seasons, snack food consumption, gathered forest foods, number of different foods consumed)

4 Consumption of key foods (those consumed only in famine situations, those considered luxuries or delicacies, those with particularly high nutrient contents, those with special nutrient contents)

5 Child feeding practices (medicines and "health" foods fed to children when ill, extent of consumption of snack foods and availability to the nutritionally vulnerable, meal frequency, weaning foods)

Assessing the household food supply

1 Amount of stored foods, storage capacity, length of food storage

2 Duration of crop availability, season when crop supplies dwindle, duration of hunger periods, reliability of crop production year to year, number of months of staple food self-sufficiency.

3 Emergency measures during hunger periods

4 Seasonal patterns of consumption of key foods

5 Duration of milk supply

6 Availability of alternative food sources, especially forest foods

7 Periods of market availability and prices of foods in hunger periods

Assessing the impact of income earning activities

1 Change in purchasing power and debts

2 Increased food purchases during the hunger season?

3 More livestock sold to tide through emergency period?

4 How income spent (on more food) and invested (eg. in land, livestock, new tools)

5 Who within the household earns, spends and controls money

6 What are the cash needs (tax payments, school fees, agricultural inputs, etc.)

Assessing changes in environmental conditions

1 Housing

2 Water quality and quantity

3 Incidence of environmentally induced disease

4 Environmental stability of food production systems (eg. soil conservation)

Assessing changes in pressures on women's time

1 Time preparing, processing and collecting food

2 Time collecting fuelwood

3 Income earning activities - time required, contribution to household income, role in society

4 Child care

5 Food production

6 Incidence of disease or health problems

Assessing nutritional status

1 Anthropometric measurements

2 Infant mortality rates

3 Nutrient deficiencies