Farm production diversity and women's dietary diversity: Evidence from central Tunisia

Abstract

In the context of studies on the effects of agricultural production diversity, there are debates in the scientific community as to the level of diversification appropriate for improving dietary diversity. In Tunisia, agriculture is a strategic sector for the economy and a critical pillar of its food sovereignty. Using instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity, we have estimated the association between agricultural production diversity and women's dietary diversity among smallholder farming households in the Sidi Bouzid governorate (central Tunisia). Although we found a low level of agricultural production diversity and a fairly diversified diet among women, we observed a systematic weak positive association between five different indicators of agricultural production diversity and women's dietary diversity. We observed a stronger positive association between women's dietary diversity and women being more educated and households being wealthier. Neither diversity of food supplies in food markets nor market distance were associated with women's dietary diversity, whereas we observed a higher level of consumption of some products (dairy) when they were produced on the farm.

Fig 1. Map of the governorate of Sidi Bouzid.

Main agro-climatic conditions of each of the 12 delegations are represented by 4 gray shades (upper arid mild in the east–darker gray; upper arid temperate in most of the delegations–light gray; cool semi-arid in the north–dark gray; lower arid mild in the south–lighter gray) and 24 food markets are marked as square symbols. Map modified for illustrative purposes from maps available on https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Tunisia_delegations.png.

Fig 2. Percentage of women consuming specific food groups across four seasons in the Sidi Bouzid governorate (n = 290).

Significance at the 5%, 1% level indicated by *, ** respectively using Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test.

Fig 3. Box-plot of women’s annual dietary diversity scores (annual WDDS-10) according the orientation of agricultural production (n = 290).

Self-consumption: farms where 80% of the value of annual production is kept for self-consumption (n = 60). Market-oriented: farms where 80% of the value of annual production is sold (n = 140). Mixed: the farms with a more balance distribution of the outlets of use of its production (n = 90).