EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Intervening in Cash Crop Value Chains for Improved Nutrition: Evidence from Rural Sierra Leone

Isaac Bonuedi, Nicolas Gerber and Lukas Kornher

Journal of Development Studies, 2022, vol. 58, issue 1, 38-54

Abstract: Despite their economic importance, some export-oriented cash crops inherently have low nutritional value for smallholder farmers in developing countries, where the prevalence of malnutrition and food insecurity remains alarming. This paper investigates the nutritional effects of a multi-faceted nutrition-sensitive agricultural programme, uniquely designed to address food and nutrition insecurity among smallholder cocoa, coffee and cashew farmers in Sierra Leone. Estimation of programme effects is done using the inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment, which addresses potential selection bias on observables and accommodates multiple programme exposure. We do not find a positive effect on household and individual dietary outcomes of the production-focused component, unless it is complemented with nutrition education. The analysis shows that combining both cash crop production and nutrition interventions significantly improves household, maternal and children’s dietary diversity and, more importantly, the intake of micronutrient-rich foods among smallholder cash cropping households. This result holds after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity using the correlated random effects model. We found improvements in nutrition knowledge, and women’s confidence to be the potential pathways linking the combined intervention to better dietary outcomes.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2021.1945043 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:58:y:2022:i:1:p:38-54

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2021.1945043

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:58:y:2022:i:1:p:38-54