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The agricultural sector is emerging as the engine for growth and food security in Mali. The sector contributes up to 36% to the gross domestic product (GDP) and occupies 80% of the population (Maiga et al., 2019). Agricultural production varies by region, but the Southern and Central areas are generally the most productive, especially when it comes to cereals. The main cereals produced and consumed in the country are millet, sorghum, rice, and maize (Tounkara et al., 2019). Production metrics showed a sharp increase of those staple and cereal crops from year 2000, reflecting the potential for agriculture to achieve self-sufficiency in food production (World Bank, 2018; Kouressy et al., 2019). In contrast, the number of people facing chronic and persistent food insecurity and malnutrition has been steadily increasing in the past decade (Sanga et al., 2021). Segregated data showed that 54% of women 15–49 years of age with one child under 5 years suffer from anemia and that the national GDP in Mali is decreased by 2.7% due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies (Kennedy et al., 2009). FAO (1996) expressed that food insecurity exists when all human beings do not have, at all times, physical and economic access to sufficient, healthy, and nutritious food to enable them to meet their energy needs and food preferences to lead a healthy and active life. However, the notion of nutritional insecurity encompasses and goes beyond that of food insecurity. The prevalence of food insecurity and malnutrition is of concern especially when the availability and accessibility of nutritionally adequate foods are limited and/or uncertain. The consequences in Mali include low nutritional intake, the prevalence of stunting is of 27% for young children 0–23 months, and the perseverance of undernutrition among 18.5% women, particularly in rural areas (Konate et al., 2020).

Many drivers influence the linkage between agricultural productivity with food and nutrition security. Empirical evidence confirms the role of agriculture for the improvement of incomes and food, which provides two capital dimensions of food security: the availability and accessibility of food and reduction of malnutrition (FAO et al., 2021). Agricultural production in Mali is concentrated on few basic products, exacerbating the challenges of food insecurity, while the narrow staple production is reflected in food consumption with the dominant crops accounting for a significant portion of the caloric intake. Much of food produced locally is based on the proportion of crops in the different climatic zones (for example, rice and maize are cultivated in regions with high rainfall and irrigated areas, millet and sorghum in areas of medium and low precipitation). Moreover, since spatially distributed factors (climate, crops grown, infrastructure, market development, etc.) influence production or nutrition (Tefft et al., 2000), Joseph and Wodon (2008) saw in Mali important differences in the weight of the various cereals in the overall consumption basket of the population, as well as differences between various types of households in their consumption patterns.

In the prospect of malnutrition alleviation, on the one hand, crop diversification has been promoted by different nutrition and food security interventions. Adjimoti and Kwadzo (2018) found that crop diversification has a positive effect on household food security status, and for Ijaz et al. (2019), it is a dynamic tool to ensure the food security in a sustainable way. It has great potential to strengthen the resilience and nutritional situation of households and farming communities (World Bank, 2018; Heumesser and Kray, 2019), and the diversity of crops grown through dietary diversity can improve household food security. The factors leading to diversification decisions are numerous, among which we can cite the following: an increase in farmers' incomes, reduction of the risks of food shortages and deficiencies, response to changing consumer demands or modification of policy government, the response to external shocks, and, more recently, as a consequence of global warming. In rural remote areas where household access to food depends largely on its production, crop diversification provides farmers with the different crops that they cannot access either because of the cost or because of the poor infrastructure constraints.

On the other hand, many approaches have concentrated on macroeconomic solutions and concepts of national food security. For instance, the availability of overall food stocks was emphasized, taking into account local production, imports, and exports and usually concentrating on staple foods. Planning along these lines did help to assure adequate national supplies but did not always fully address problems of dietary diversity, food quality and safety, post-harvest losses, processing and marketing, or access to food by all individuals and households (FAO, 1992). In this line, the concept of Smartfood mainstreaming “traditional” Smart Foods back as staples across Africa and Asia has been initiated. Smart Foods are food items that fulfill the criteria of being good for you, the planet, and the farmer. Sorghum and millet were selected as the first Smart Foods, and a participatory fun-filled approach was adopted to create awareness, to develop culturally acceptable products, and to bring about behavior change to improve adoption, dietary diversity, and nutritional status (Diama et al., 2020). In drylands, the smart food approach is innovating that millet and sorghum which are nutritious crops (Barikmo et al., 2007; Chande et al., 2021) can be better consumed through improved local dishes; thus, the household's daily energy requirements, particularly those of women and children, may be raised. As baseline research of such social marketing intervention of the smart food approach, we had the main concern for assessing how diversification of crops has positive effects on food consumption and the nutritional situation of households. In fact, the approach is providing a paradigm supporting the trends that Malian farmers, while often willing to try new crops, are typically loath to give up sorghum/millet cultivation since it represents the major part of their effort to provide self-sufficiency to their families (Foltz, 2010).

For this study, it has been postulated that the households and the consumers of millet and sorghum, identified and characterized in rural areas and particularly in the urban center of Bamako, have different needs. Therefore, the study focuses on three main objectives: (1) evaluate the food consumption score in households and the nutritional situation among children; (2) estimate the determinants of crop diversification; and (3) evaluate the effect of crop diversification and consumption of Smart Foods and household nutritional security.

The findings of our study show wide farmer practices of crop diversification. These results are consistent with regional analyses across the Sahelian countries in West Africa (Félix et al., 2018; Abberton et al., 2021). Crop diversification is an important principle of nutrition sensitivity to improve dietary diversity and food production in farm. It is evidenced that diversification may be a route from agriculture to nutrition, as it can directly affect the amount and types of food available for consumption in smallholder households. Indeed, in our context, improving access and stock to food alone does not guarantee better nutritional outcomes as expressed by the FCS that lay down rural households under moderate food security. This diagnosis confirms the conclusion of Youssouf (2017) that there is higher prevalence of food insecurity in rural areas compared to urban areas. Since sorghum and millet together account for 73% of the land area devoted to cereal production and 51% of the cereals produced in Mali (Foltz, 2010), the heavy reliance on a low range of commodities or staple crops, or even just one, exacerbates the multiple risks to rural livelihoods and nutrition arising from agricultural production which is threatened by various climate-related stressors and market volatility. In fact, Adams (1992) explained that the prevalence and severity of household food insecurity are strongly related to rainfall.

Overall consumer perception on diversification using foods made from millet, sorghum, groundnuts, and cowpeas aligns with the recognition that they can help to correct certain deficiencies and reduce certain diseases. Consumers of millet and sorghum are mostly in rural areas while urban areas are characterized by increased consumption and preference of rice in their diet. Kearney (2010) highlighted that the undergoing rapid transition in urban areas is experiencing nutritional transition in underdeveloped countries, and this is partly due to policies of trade liberalization over the past two decades with an increasing number of obesity and cardiovascular accident. Another valuable paradox to consider in the analysis, according to Bocoum et al. (2014), is that some poor households are managing to cover their caloric requirements by eating cheap calories and some non-poor households not doing so because they consume expensive calories and/or face constraints such as the obligation to share meals with visitors and high expenditure on healthcare or transportation.

For youth, our study shows that the prevalence of food insecurity is 30%, this result being superimposed on that of 26.6% as reported by Republique du Mali (2019); in fact, inadequate and insufficient nutrition, along with many other factors, contributes to poor nutritional status in children aged 6–48 months, from which nearly a third are with stunted growth. Children under 5 in urban areas had a better nutritional status compared to those in rural areas. Urban living is associated with better diet as an urban environment provides better monetary opportunity and food accessibility. However, other parameters such as access to healthcare and childcare practices and access to drinking water may influence nutritional results. Meanwhile, education of girls and women enables them to make more informed choices in matters of nutrition and health of their children (the higher the knowledge about the importance of a diversified diet, the better the nutritional status of children). Hirvonen (2016) supported that the difference in dietary diversity among children between rural and urban areas could be due to differences in parents' level of education, access to health services, and health between the two environments. As shown in our data, a high rate of illiteracy among women suggests a low level of knowledge on good feeding and care practices for young children. The survey reveals a low level of education, comparable to that reported by INSTAT AFRISTAT (2019) (34% for the whole country).

Multinomial logistic regression results underline socioeconomic factors that positively influence crop diversification. Notably, level of education, size of the household, and agricultural production per person positively influence the commitment of producers to the diversification of crops. Here again, having a certain level of education increases the probability for the producer to engage in the production of several crops (cereals and pulses) compared to producers only making cereals. This confirmed the findings of Idrisa et al. (2008) and Makombe et al. (2010). In fact, Mango et al. (2018) attributed that education can effectively improve prospects of the farming households to diversify their livelihoods through participation in off-farm formal employment activities as well as the access to and use of information while developing the capacity of farmers to enhance food security. Likewise, in cities, there are more heads of households with an acceptable level of education. The significance of household size is explained by the capacity of an agricultural household to undertake several agricultural activities. Household stratification in Mali according to the capacity to sustain a secure, adequate, and viable diet revealed the food-secure to be large and wealthy households with sufficient resources to diversify production and to invest in agriculture and social networks of exchange (Adams, 1992).

Our study limitation is that the producer sample size is relatively small compared to the population concerned in this study and could probably pose a problem of representativeness of our data. It will be recalled, however, that the main goal sought was to understand the mechanisms of crop diversification, which is one of the factors in increasing productivity and improving the living conditions of the Malian population, rather than having a statistical representativeness. In Mango et al. (2018), with a comparable sample of 271 individuals, the authors have shown that diversification of crops represent a viable option in smallholder agriculture and it can ensure the establishment of resilient farming systems that can significantly contribute to household food security. The two studies are in favor that the diversification of crops improves agricultural production but could have increased its availability for household consumption, for better dietary intake of protein and energy and consequently nutritional outcomes. In addition to this, diversification is done by some growers to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on crop yields. The positive impact of the diversification of crops on the living conditions of small farmers encourages for the intensification and promotion of crop diversification by policy toward the fight against persistent threat of malnutrition and food insecurity. Since it is often the poorest, low-resource farmers who grow millet and sorghum, there are significant poverty benefits from better millet and sorghum technology (Foltz, 2010) with a consequence that small changes in the productivity of those lands can have large impacts on overall food security of the nation.

Crop diversification is practiced by majority of smallholder farmers surveyed, but households in both urban and rural areas consume a limited range of crops and children are nutritionally insecure. There is a potential for smart food crop initiatives to support malnutrition and food insecurity in both areas since households have a sound perception of nutritional assets of those crops in their daily diet. This approach will have to focus its intervention on awareness and education programs for maximizing the incentive to consume nutritious foods from self-production and market purchases. In terms of food policy, much effort has been established by the Malian government's flagship on Scaling Up Nutrition to underline advocacy actions for nutrition based on the results of analyses, policies, and laws. Our results suggest that such policies need to approach a sustainable and holistic manner of crop diversification by offering an enabling environment that considers the improvement of education; reduction of extreme poverty; human health; the boosting of agricultural production with higher access to inputs; increased access to agricultural market infrastructure and climate smart technologies, business, and agricultural extension services; and support of processors for making nutritious and healthy products available in the local market.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary materials, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s), and minor(s)' legal guardian/next of kin, for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

This study was funded by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics through the Project Grant No FOOD/2019/407715 Améliorer la productivité des cultures et la resilience au Climat pour la Sécurité Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle au Mali (UE_APSAN-Mali) project.

The author's views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the European Union Delegation in Mali.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.