Seasonal Calendar of Food Availability
Overview of Seasonal Food Availability Calendar Tool. The seasonal food availability calendar tool is designed to assess the availability of wild, cultivated, and purchased fresh foods in the community over the months of the year. Within focus group discussions, participants are asked to free list the different fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes and pulses, animal source foods, nuts and seeds, and cereals and grains that are available within the community (note: not all food groups are required, and the selection of groups should depend on research questions and needs). After listing the different foods available for each of the food groups, the participants are asked to identify where they source the food (wild, cultivated, built food environments) and score its availability each month of the year on a scale from unavailable to high availability. In addition, the tool includes a module related to sustainability and perceived changes to the availability of the foods over time. The seasonal calendar of food availability is based on the guide developed by Bioversity International (Lochetti et al., 2020) as well as the modified version in the USAID Advancing Nutrition Guidelines for Market-Based Food Environment Assessments (USAID, 2023). This tool provides a seasonal calendar of the foods that are available within the community.
Seasonal Calendar Food Availability Cover Page
Seasonal Calendar of Food Availability Tool
Seasonal Calendar of Food Availability Instructions
Seasonal Calendar of Food Availability Excel Workbook
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To assess the seasonal availability of foods in the community and any perceived changes to their availability due to climate variability or other changes.
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You should use this tool if you want to understand the seasonal availability of fresh foods over the course of the year in a given community.
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Approximately 6-8 participants should be purposively selected per focus group discussion to represent people who are familiar with the wild, cultivated, and purchased foods in the community. We recommend splitting up the food groups into two focus groups to reduce the length of time of the focus group discussions (2 focus groups per community).
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The seasonal food availability calendar assesses the external as well as the wild, cultivated and built food environments.
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The seasonal food availability calendar assesses the dimensions of food availability and sustainability.
Food environment type Food environment dimension Built, wild, cultivated, supplemental food assistance Availability Sustainability Vendors in communities or markets · Level of permanence of food vendor · Food groups and foods sold by vendor
· Form sold (e.g., raw/fresh, deep fried, etc.)
· Use of plastics · Sustainability labeling, signage, or messaging
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A focus group facilitator leads the focus group discussion and completes the calendar based on the participants’ feedback.
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- Focus group discussion (with free listing)
- Scoring of food availability using a matrix of months of the year and available foods
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The availability of each food is given a score from 0-3 for each of the months. Heat maps can be produced for each community to depict the availability across seasons based on individual food items and food groups.
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A key strength of this tool is that it provides information about the availability of food from wild, cultivated, and built food environment spaces.
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Key weaknesses of this tool include the relatively long amount of time that it takes to complete the focus group discussions (~90-120 min) and the reliance on people’s perceptions of the availability of different foods. Ensuring that focus group participants are familiar with the diversity of foods available from the different food environment types is critical.
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Lochetti, G., Meldrum, G., Kennedy, G. and Termote, C., 2020. Seasonal food availability calendar for improved diet quality and nutrition: Methodology guide.
USAID Advancing Nutrition. 2023. Guidelines for Market-Based Food Environment Assessments. Instruction Manual. Arlington, VA: USAID Advancing Nutrition.