The joint influence of farm production diversity and market food purchase visits on smallholder household diets in Northern Ethiopia

Consumption of nutritionally poor and monotonous diets causes many smallholders in low-income countries to suffer from micronutrient malnutrition. Although empirical evidence is mixed, increasing farm production diversity and improving smallholder market access, defined in this paper as the frequency of market food purchases visits, have been widely reported as effective approaches to address the situation. Various studies have examined the relative influence of farm production diversity and market access on household dietary diversity. However, only a few have empirically investigated the joint interplay in shaping smallholder household diets. This research addresses this gap based on cross-sectional data from 396 smallholder households in rural Tigray in Northern Ethiopia. In the analysis, a graphical interpretation of the relationship between farm production diversity and three different market access measures is applied, followed by a deeper investigation using Poisson estimation methods. Household frequency of food market visits is rigorously tested for stability and compared with alternative market access measures. Our findings reveal that farm production diversity and the frequency of food market visits, jointly and independently, have a positive and significant nonlinear influence on the dietary diversity of rural smallholder households. The right mix of farm production diversity and smallholder households’ frequency of food market visits increases rural household dietary diversity. Household dietary diversity, measured by proximity to markets, is influenced by market accessibility thresholds in a non-linear manner rather than by simple linear distances. The implication is that different market accessibility thresholds require different policy approaches for effective dietary influences.