PhD defence: Agricultural productivity, crop diversity and nutritional security in Tanzania

PhD candidate: FM (Fausta) Mapunda MSc. Promotor: prof.dr.ir. EH (Erwin) Bulte. Co-promotor: dr.ir. MM (Marrit) van den Berg. Organisation: Wageningen University, Development Economics. Summary: Food and nutritional insecurity remain a significant and persistent challenge. This PhD thesis contributes to understanding the key factors that shape productivity, the level of Technical Efficiency (TE) and income of rural Tanzania, and their implications for household food and nutrition security. The analysis employed mixed methods to answer important research questions. In the individual chapters, I assessed the impacts of land title on productivity; the nexus between crop diversity, market access, and dietary diversity at individual and household levels; quality differences in modern seeds on productivity and TE; and off-farm employment on household food and nutritional security. Results show the productivity of land-titled plots is higher. Crop diversity relates to household-level dietary diversity but does not have higher dietary diversity in women. These findings have policy implications in designing interventions to improve agricultural productivity and strengthen rural output markets for household income to access nutritious diets that promote well-being.

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