Prevalence of malnutrition among under-five children is very high in many developing countries of the World. As a step towards reducing the prevalence, there is need to identify the important determinants of malnutrition in the specific context. This study investigated the prevalence and determinants of malnutrition among under-five children of farming households in Kwara State, Nigeria.

Descriptive and regression analyses were used to analyze anthropometrics data collected from 127 children selected randomly from 40 rural villages in the State. Descriptive results indicated that 23.6%, 22.0% and 14.2% of the sample children were stunted, underweight and wasted respectively. Regression analysis showed that the significant determinants of malnutrition were gender and age of child, education and body mass index of mother, calorie intake of the households, access to clean water and presence of toilet in the households.

The results of this study have important policy implications for reduction of child malnutrition in Nigeria. First, the fact that maternal education came out clearly as a significant determinant showed that women education is important to reducing malnutrition and therefore the need for effective targeting of women for education programmes. To a large extent, women are responsible for feeding and caring for young children. The quality of feeding and care given to the children would reflect the level of education of the mother when other factors are fixed. The study identified that there is need to target pregnant women with specific education and health care programs. These specific education and health programmes could be included in the formal education curriculum in order to make them reach teenage girls even before their first pregnancy. Second, the provision of clean water for rural households should be taken seriously by government. Clean water will prevent the spread of water-borne diseases that can negatively affect the health and nutrition of young children. Authors made it clear that this study of sample size of 127 under-five children could be relatively small and the inclusion of more child specific and health related variables, and increasing the sample size, might produce a more robust results.

The methodology adopted in this study was clearly analyzed (especially the anthropometric analysis) which would have been made clearer to the readers by employing the use of tables and figures to concisely report the results of this research. The descriptive characteristics of the respondents used for this research as well as regression analysis results were not presented in tables which would have given better clarity on the part of the readers of this publication. Each result reported in this study should have been followed with relevant tables and /or figures to really buttress the discussion of these results, but these are conspicuously missing in this study.

Results and discussion section of this study are well presented (but with no tables and figures) with relevant and retrievable references. This study did not include conspicuous recommendations emanating from this research also areas for further research were not mentioned or identified in this study.