This is Jahi Chappell, Senior Research Fellow, Agroecology and Agricultural Policy at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, UK.
Regarding production diversity and household nutrition, I would say the most rigorous assessment is that there is insufficient evidence to make conclusive statements either way. There is even *less* evidence with regards to how contingent the relationship is - that is to say, it could be that in a condition of isolation, poor infrastructure, and/or predominance of large farms, for example, there is a weaker - or stronger - relationship between production diversity and nutritional status. And that when there is significant socioeconomic stability, relative equality, politically empowered farmers, and strong local markets, there may be a different relationship.
There simply is not a significant enough source of reliable data, I would say, to be definitive, and there are valid theoretical reasons to argue about the relationship from perspectives of political economy, historical development, current conditions, and path dependency, as well as human ecology. There is certainly qualitative evidence that there is a relationship:
Burlingame, B., & Dernini, S. (Eds.). (2012). Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity: Directions and solutions for policy, research and action. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Chappell, M. J., Wittman, H., Bacon, C. M., Ferguson, B. G., Barrios, L. G., Barrios, R. G., . . . Perfecto, I. (2013). Food sovereignty: an alternative paradigm for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in Latin America. F1000Research, 2, 235. doi:10.12688/f1000research.2-235.v1
Frison, E. A., Smith, I. F., Johns, T., Cherfas, J., & Eyzaguirre, P. B. (2006). Agricultural biodiversity, nutrition, and health: Making a difference to hunger and nutrition in the developing world. Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 27(2), 167-179.
Heredia, B., Medeiros, L., Palmeira, M., Cintrão, R., & Pereira Leite, S. (2006). Regional impacts of land reform in Brazil. In P. M. Rosset, R. C. Patel, & M. Courville (Eds.), Promised land: Competing visions of agrarian reform (pp. 277-300). New York: Food First Books/CDS.
Isakson, S. R. (2009). No hay ganancia en la milpa: the agrarian question, food sovereignty, and the on-farm conservation of agrobiodiversity in the Guatemalan highlands. Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(4), 725-759.
Jaffee, D. (2007). Brewing justice: Fair trade coffee, sustainability, and survival. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Johns, T., & Eyzaguirre, P. B. (2006). Biofortification, biodiversity and diet: A search for complementary applications against poverty and malnutrition. Food Policy, 32, 1-24.
Méndez, V. E., Bacon, C. M., Olson, M., Morris, K. S., & Shattuck, A. (2010). Agrobiodiversity and Shade Coffee Smallholder Livelihoods: A Review and Synthesis of Ten Years of Research in Central America. The Professional Geographer, 62(3), 357-376. doi:10.1080/00330124.2010.483638
Remans, R., Flynn, D. F. B., DeClerck, F., Diru, W., Fanzo, J., Gaynor, K., . . . Palm, C. A. (2010). Exploring new metrics: Nutritional diversity of cropping systems. In B. Burlingame & S. Dernini (Eds.), Sustainable diets and biodiversity: Directions and solutions for policy, research and action (pp. 134-149). Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
It would seem a preponderance of evidence points to a positive association.
M. Jahi Chappell, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow, Agroecology and Agricultural Policy
Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience
Coventry University
Coventry,
UK
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