In many developing countries consumption of animal source foods (ASF) among the poor is still at a level where increasing its share in total caloric intake may have many positive nutritional benefits. This paper explores whether ownership of different livestock species increases consumption of ASF and helps improving child nutritional status, finding some evidence that both food consumption patterns and nutritional outcomes may be affected by livestock ownership in rural Uganda. Our results are suggestive that promoting (small) livestock ownership has the potential for affecting human nutrition in rural Uganda, but further research is needed to more precisely estimate the direction and size of these effects.

Droughts are associated with several societal ills, especially in developing economies that rely on rainfed agriculture. Recently, researchers have begun to examine the effect of droughts on the risk of Intimate-Partner Violence (IPV), but so far this work has led to inconclusive results. For example, two large recent studies analyzed comparable data from multiple sub-Saharan African countries and drew opposite conclusions. We attempt to resolve this apparent paradox by replicating previous analyses with the largest data set yet assembled to study drought and IPV. Integrating the methods of previous studies and taking particular care to control for spatial autocorrelation, we find little association between drought and most forms of IPV, although we do find evidence of associations between drought and women’s partners exhibiting controlling behaviors. Moreover, we do not find significant heterogeneous effects based on wealth, employment, household drinking water sources, or urban-rural locality.

Initiatives on the sustainable intensification of agriculture have introduced improved technologies tailored to farmers’ local conditions by trial demonstration with free provision of improved seeds and fertilizers. It is not clear, though, whether smallholder farmers would be willing to pay for these technologies, and what factors determine their informed demand. Using a contingent valuation experiment, combined with information at baseline among 400 households in Northern Tanzania, this study measured farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for hybrid maize seed and local inorganic fertilizer. Farmers’ WTP was estimated using a dichotomous contingent valuation with follow-up model. Results showed that the average WTP was 61% higher for hybrid maize seed, and 15% lower for inorganic fertilizer, than their respective average local market prices during the reference period, suggesting that farmers were willing to pay a premium for hybrid maize seed, while they did not seem to be interested in fertilizer purchase at current market price. Moreover, since improved access to extension services was found to positively affect farmers’ WTP, strengthening extension services could be a suitable policy intervention to increase farmers’ demand for improved technologies. On the other hand, farmers’ risk aversion was negatively correlated with WTP for both technologies. This result suggests that encouraging risk reduction options, such as agricultural insurance, could be a useful policy strategy for boosting farmers’ demand for improved agricultural technologies.

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In many developing countries consumption of animal source foods (ASF) among the poor is still at a level where increasing its share in total caloric intake may have many positive nutritional benefits. This paper explores whether ownership of different livestock species increases consumption of ASF and helps improving child nutritional status, finding some evidence that both food consumption patterns and nutritional outcomes may be affected by livestock ownership in rural Uganda. Our results are suggestive that promoting (small) livestock ownership has the potential for affecting human nutrition in rural Uganda, but further research is needed to more precisely estimate the direction and size of these effects.

Sustainable intensification and climate-smart agriculture initiatives promote complex systems-based innovations to simultaneously improve yields and conserve natural resources. These innovations are usually tested under near-perfect experimental conditions with purposively selected farmers. Using a quasi-experimental approach and geographic information system, we evaluate a systems-based sustainable intensification project in Malawi aiming at improving whole-farm productivity and nutrition through integrated agricultural innovations. We find adopters of these innovations to systematically differ from non-adopters and suggestive evidence of potential systematic targeting of project locations and households. Econometric results using efficient influence function and propensity score matching methods show consistently higher maize yield and value of harvest, on average and across quantiles, for project beneficiaries, compared to that of randomly selected nonbeneficiary households in non-target villages. Our findings highlight the need to rethink selection criteria for systems-based innovations, something that could potentially bear severe implications upon scaling up.

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Background: The diets of millions of poor individuals lack adequate amount of essential nutrients. Objective: To examine the determinants of household dietary diversity in Burkina Faso and assess whether the choice of a diversity metric matters. Methods: Using survey data from 2014, we construct 3 metrics—Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), Berry Index (BI), and Healthy Food Diversity Index (HFDI). Unlike the oft-used HDDS, the BI captures the quantity distribution of food items while the HFDI captures all 3 aspects of a healthy diet—count, quantity distribution, and health value. We fit linear (for BI and HFDI) and Poisson (for HDDS) models controlling for several socioeconomic and climatic covariates. Results: Some parameter estimates are sensitive to the diversity metric with fewer significant covariates observed in the HFDI model. Overall, diets are more diverse for households in urban areas, with female or better educated heads, with higher asset-based wealth and with more diverse on-farm production, while remoteness reduces dietary diversity. Higher precipitation seems to reduce diversity, potentially driven by the spatial heterogeneity in precipitation and on-farm production diversity. Conclusions: The sensitivity of estimates to the metric used underscores potentially more complex interactions that determine the quantity distribution of food items consumed. Policies that enhance on-farm production diversity, market access, and women’s empowerment may help improve dietary diversity and subsequent nutritional benefits. Efforts should be made to compile health value data that are relevant to developing countries facing nutrition transition.