The impact of tenure security and agricultural diversity on food security

Abstract

In the literature, the study of tenure and food security has largely involved separate lines of inquiry. In effect, insufficient research on the relationship between tenure and food security hampers the development of knowledge and policy guidance aimed at improving food and nutrition security. Drawing from this motivation, the authors study the relationships among tenure security, on-farm tree diversity, food security and dietary diversity. They employ Instrumental Variable approaches to examine the effect of tenure security and on-farm tree diversity on food security and dietary diversity. They find tenure security is inversely related with food insecurity as shown by its negative association with hunger scale, hunger index and hunger category. Furthermore, results suggest that tenure security improves minimum dietary diversity of women, while no significant relationship was observed with child dietary diversity. Moreover, on-farm tree diversity is positively related with minimum dietary diversity of women, which may point to higher accessibility and consumption of dietary food groups by women. Besides, the findings suggest that farmers leverage their human capital and land resources to enhance food security and dietary diversity. This underscores the importance of improving land access and ensuring tenure security for promoting on-farm tree diversity, food security and dietary diversity. It also highlights the need to explore the relationship between tenure security and food security. By recognizing the critical role of long-term tenure security, the study suggests that policymaking should gear towards developing strategies to foster on-farm tree diversity in order to improve food security and dietary diversity.