Does livestock-crop diversification improve food and nutrition security? Evidence from Eastern Ethiopia

Pastoral and agro-pastoral households are the most vulnerable parts of the population to climate change-induced shocks and they are increasingly subject to acute food and nutrition insecurity. We identified drivers of livestock-crop diversification and examined its effects on improving households’ food and nutrition security using cross sectional data collected from 258 households across five districts in the East Hararghe zone in Ethiopia. Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) analysis was used to identify factors associated with the households’ food and nutrition security outcomes and estimate the causal effects of livestock-crop diversification on the households’ food and nutrition security. Our results show that land certification, mobile phone ownership, and access to pastoral training centres were positively and significantly associated with livestock-crop diversification. In contrast, being located in Meyu Muluke and Kumbi districts were negatively and significantly associated with livestock-crop diversification, compared to Chinaksen district. The average treatment effect estimations suggest that livestock-crop diversification has positively and significantly improved diversified households’ nutritional security outcome. The findings also reveal that non-diversified households’ food insecurity would have reduced had they diversified. Nonetheless, livestock-crop diversification is neither enough to pull farm households fully out of food and nutrition insecurity nor the only factor influencing farm households’ food and nutrition security outcomes. Hence, there is also a need to strengthen access to physical infrastructure, credit facilities, extension services, provision of farm inputs, and pastoral training centres to reduce food and nutrition insecurity in the study area.