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African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development
Rural Outreach Program
ISSN: 1684-5358 EISSN: 1684-5358
Vol. 20, No. 6, 2020, pp. 16604-16621
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Bioline Code: nd20095
Full paper language: English
Document type: Research Article
Document available free of charge
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African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development, Vol. 20, No. 6, 2020, pp. 16604-16621
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CHANGE IN SOY AND NUTRITION KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTIONS OF SMALLHOLDER SOUTH AFRICAN FARMERS AFTER ATTENDING A SINGLE ONE DAY SOY NUTRITION TRAINING WORKSHOP: A PILOT STUDY
Oldewage-Theron, W; Morales, S & Egal, A
Abstract
The main aim of this pilot study was to assess smallholder soy farmers’ knowledge and
perceptions of soy immediately before and after participating in a one-day soy nutrition
training workshop. A pre-post study design was used among a convenience sample of 78
soy smallholder farmers from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (SA). A total of 78 men and
five women participated in the training, but because only five women attended, gender
comparison analysis was not carried out. A soy nutrition training workshop, including
soy cooking demonstrations, tasting, recipe development, that is based on the Social
Cognitive Theory, was implemented for eight consecutive hours with one break of 30
minutes. Pre- and post-quantitative data measuring, soy knowledge and perceptions were
collected using a modified version of a survey, tested for face and content validity and
reliability, and used previously in other research study projects by the same authors
among low-resource communities in SA. The data from the pre and post questionnaires
indicated that only 41% of the soy smallholder farmers used soy in the household and
mainly in meat dishes. The rest of the harvested soy was either sold or used for animal
feed. The mean±standard deviation (SD) score of taste preference changed significantly
(p=0.002) from 4.60±0.84 before, to 4.93±0.13 after the training (p=0.002) and the
majority of the participants perceived it was easy to prepare soy foods; 82.1% and 88.5%
before and after the training, respectively (p=0.013). Participants’ soy knowledge
improved significantly (p<0.001) from a mean± (SD) score of 26.33±4.06 before to
32.00±9.46 after the intervention, indicating a significant improvement of 5.67±9.11
[13.83%] in the total score. The results from this study indicate that there is a need for
nutrition education programs for smallholder farmers. Thus, improvement in both soy
knowledge and preference should result in more soy being consumed first for household
nutritional needs before giving it to either animals or sell it on the market. Since
smallholder farmers’ nutrition education can impact both food insecurity and nutritional
status improvement in one setting, more interventions of this kind are needed to further
advance the frontier of this niche area of research.
Keywords
nutrition education; smallholder famers; soy training; South Africa emerging farmers; Knowledge perception
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