Ameliorating Food and Nutrition Security in Farm Households: Does Informatization Matter?

Abstract

Improving food and nutrition security in Sub-Saharan Africa’s farm households has become a prominent priority subject for researchers and policymakers alike. Interestingly, it is realized through enhancement in dietary diversity and quality. To this end, better access to food and information is considered a prerequisite. Given that mobile phone coverage offers new prospects for increasing rural households’ access to information, can informatization (mobile phone used as a concrete example) possibly influence dietary diversity and quality? Cross-sectional data collected from farm households in Zambia is used to address this topic by applying the ordinary least square and endogenous switching regression (ESR). Household dietary diversity score was constructed based on a 7-days recall approach to measure consumption patterns. Our robust regression result indicates that mobile phone use positively and significantly influences dietary diversity and quality. Particularly, gender-disaggregated regression reveals that male-headed households have stronger positive associations than their counterparts. We also find that in comparison to non-adopters, adopters consume three more foods weekly. This is attributable to the income gains and increased frequency in information access on account of mobile phone adoption. Conversely, average consumption would increase by two more foods weekly if mobile phones were adopted in non-adopting households. Therefore, our study puts forwards substantial empirical evidence to warrant policy formulation directed at promoting informatization among farm households. Eventually, this could possibly recuperate dynamism in agricultural food production as food and nutrition security in farm households ameliorates.

Innovative Digital Technologies for Purchasing and Consumption in Urban and Regional Agro-Food Systems: A Systematic Review

“…Almost half of studies on mobile phones and tablets focused on African countries and their use of SMS, voice messages or WhatsApp for agro-food sales or health advice [68,70,72,74]. Chang et al [68] assessed the existing ICT contribution in connecting farmers to the market in Senegal: mobile phones were the most widely available technology, but they were still not majorly used as a marketing tool by producers.…”

Rethinking Food Production: Nexus of Mobile Phones and Production Cost Minimization

“…Consequently, the expansion of mobile phones has elicited numerous studies providing evidence of their benefits in agriculture, such as enabling the adoption of new practices and improving farmers' production practices [11,12], improved marketing decisions and market efficiency [13][14][15][16], enhanced agricultural productivity [17], ameliorates food and nutrition security [18] and developed better connection in agri-food [19]. While seemingly contradictory, there is little theoretical reason to believe that access to mobile phone technology would lead to an improvement in agricultural production cost efficiency.…”