Revisiting the effect of agricultural commercialization on food and nutrition security: Does an extended metric provide new insights?

This study contributes to the agricultural commercialization and food and nutrition security literature by using an extended metric of commercialization that encapsulates crop and livestock dimensions of farm households’ market engagements to assess its effects on food and nutrition security outcomes, under the hypothesis that it better reflects the impact of commercialization than the conventional crop commercialization metric. Instrumental variable econometric approaches are applied to nationally representative data from Ghana to assess the effects. The analysis shows that the extended metric of commercialization has significant positive effects on food consumption expenditures, household dietary diversity, consumption of vitamin A-rich, protein-rich, and hem iron-rich foods, and food insecurity experience scale, and significant negative effects on child anthropometric measures of wasting and underweight. This shows that the extended metric improves food and nutrition security. A comparative analysis reveals that the effects of the extended metric are larger than those of the crop metric, demonstrating that the contribution of the livestock subsector accounts for the larger impact of the extended metric. It is further revealed that increase in income from sales is a key transmission channel through which commercialization boosts food and nutrition security. These findings imply that the livestock subsector requires balanced policy attention and interventions as provided for the crop subsector to support the transition to commercial agriculture. It is also imperative to develop and promote well-functioning food systems through enhanced institutional collaboration.