Can Adoption of Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Help Narrow Gender Gap on Household Food Security? Evidence from Southwest Nigeria

Household food insecurity has continued to rise on a yearly basis especially in Africa south of Sahara. This increases the risk of adverse health outcome that result from malnutrition if household food insecurity is not addressed. However, nutrition-sensitive agriculture has become a way of addressing nutritional needs in developing countries. This study seeks to investigate if adoption of nutrition-sensitive agriculture could help in narrowing gender gap in household food security using a cross-sectional gender disaggregated survey data collected from 432 farming households across three states in southwest Nigeria. We used household food security as outcome variable which was measure based on five components developed by foreign agencies with little modification to suit our study. These components include measures of food consumption score (FCS), household dietary diversity score (HDDS), coping strategy index (CSI), household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS), and months of adequate household food security (MAHFS). Results show that household size, total farm size, membership of association, access to extension services, awareness of nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and access to training have a positive and statistically significant effect on nutrition-sensitive agriculture adoption among male and female farming households. The outcome variable indicates that the level of food security was higher among the nutrition-sensitive agriculture adopters compared to non-adopters across the gender. Using a robust food security model, we found that there was no statistically significant difference in the level of food security among male and female farming households who had adopted nutrition-sensitive agriculture by all indicators of food security investigated. Therefore, since, adoption of nutrition-sensitive agriculture has improved household food security among the adopters compared to non-adopters. Interventions that are aimed at improving the awareness of nutrition-sensitive agriculture among rural farming households should be encouraged in order close gender gap in households’ food security and improve nutrition outcomes. Keywords: Adoption, food security, farming household heads, gender, nutrition-sensitive agriculture