Farm Production Diversity: Is it Important for Food Security, Dietary Diversity and Nutrition? Panel Data Evidence from Uganda
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Date
2020-06-03
Authors
Sekabira, Haruna
Nalunga, Shamim
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Economic Research consortium
Abstract
Improved food security (quantities of food available to households for consumption)
and nutrition security (quality of food available to households) remain global problems.
Yet, food and nutrition security are areas of strategic importance with regard to the
UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The changing global food production systems
pose a threat to sustainable improved food and nutrition security. Consequently, a
significant population globally remains chronically hungry. Some evidence points
to market access as pivotal to enhancing food and nutrition security, whereas
other evidence points to own farm production diversity. Mixed evidence creates
knowledge gaps that worsen with disjointed insufficient empirical works on the
global agriculture-nutrition nexus. Using national household panel survey data
from Uganda, and panel regression models, we find that farm production diversity is
associated with both improved food and nutrition security. We identified that markets
and own farm production are two important food security pathways through which
households secure their nutrition. Own farm production was associated with larger
effects. Patterns by which these pathways influenced household dietary diversity
were similar to those for daily energy, iron and zinc intake, except for vitamin A. We
also found gender effects with regard to household nutrition security. Findings could
have broader implications for several countries practising smallholder agriculture.
Description
Keywords
Farm production diversity , food and nutrition security, , dietary diversity, , panel data , Uganda