Intervening in Cash Crop Value Chains for Improved Nutrition: Evidence from Rural Sierra Leone

Despite their economic importance, some export-oriented cash crops inherently have low nutritional value for smallholder farmers in developing countries, where the prevalence of malnutrition and food insecurity remains alarming. This paper investigates the nutritional effects of a multi-faceted nutrition-sensitive agricultural programme, uniquely designed to address food and nutrition insecurity among smallholder cocoa, coffee and cashew farmers in Sierra Leone. Estimation of programme effects is done using the inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment, which addresses potential selection bias on observables and accommodates multiple programme exposure. We do not find a positive effect on household and individual dietary outcomes of the production-focused component, unless it is complemented with nutrition education. The analysis shows that combining both cash crop production and nutrition interventions significantly improves household, maternal and children’s dietary diversity and, more importantly, the intake of micronutrient-rich foods among smallholder cash cropping households. This result holds after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity using the correlated random effects model. We found improvements in nutrition knowledge, and women’s confidence to be the potential pathways linking the combined intervention to better dietary outcomes.