Local and regional food production diversity are positively associated with household dietary diversity in rural Africa

Abstract

Undernutrition and low dietary quality remain widespread issues in Africa. As most rural households in the region are involved in farming, the diversification of own farm production could improve their access to nutritious foods. Here we use representative panel data from six African countries to estimate this effect across different scales. We show that farm production diversity is positively associated with household dietary diversity—yet the average magnitude of the association is small, depends on the specific measure of production diversity and increases with distance from urban centres. In all countries, markets and market access are more important for dietary diversity than own production. Because village-, town- and district-level production diversity are often positively associated with dietary diversity, higher diversity on each individual farm may not be required. The appropriate spatial scale should be considered when designing diversification strategies.