Does mixed crop‐livestock farming lead to less diversified diets among smallholders? Evidence from Laos

Priyanka Parvathi

Agricultural Economics, 2018, vol. 49, issue 4, 497-509

Abstract: Malnourishment continues to remain a challenge in developing countries. As the undernourished are largely smallholder farmers, it is widely assumed that farm diversification and mixed crop‐livestock agricultural systems can help alleviate this problem. However, empirical evidence in this context is limited. Hence, we use a two‐year panel's data from Laos to examine whether farm production diversity as well as a mixed crop‐livestock farming system improves household dietary diversity among smallholder farmer. The results from the fixed effects regression indicate that although farm production diversity does lead to a higher dietary diversity, the effect diminishes with continued farm diversification. The counterfactual analysis from the endogenous switching regression reveals that mixed crop‐livestock farming systems do not necessarily enhance dietary diversity. However, we further find that purchasing food from the markets plays an important role in enhancing the dietary diversity of rural smallholder farmers.

Date: 2018
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