 Different strategies of crop diversification between poor and non-poor farmers: Concepts and evidence from TanzaniaTakefumi Fujimoto and Aya Suzuki Ecological Economics, 2025, vol. 227, issue C Abstract: Crop diversification, or growing multiple crops in farmland, has received attention as a risk-reducing strategy for smallholders. This study attempts to show that poor and non-poor farmers adopt different strategies of crop diversification. We first conceptualize farmers’ heterogeneous motivations for crop diversification by introducing a subsistence constraint into a utility maximization problem under uncertainty. Using the Tanzanian National Panel Survey, we then examine whether past experiences of shocks affect the adoption of crop diversification differently between poor and non-poor farmers. We rely on a threshold model to estimate heterogeneous impacts between poor and non-poor farmers. We find that poor farmers adopt crop diversification for robust food securities in response to drought/flood and large increases in food prices for purchase. In contrast, non-poor farmers adopt crop diversification to stabilize market income in response to large increases in input prices and large declines in crop prices for sale. Keywords: Crop diversification; Risk-reducing strategy; Shock; Subsistence constraint; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:227:y:2025:i:c:s0921800924002660 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108369 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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