Households’ Dietary Diversity, Farm Income and Technical Efficiency Correlates: Empirical Evidence from Small-scale Farming Households in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the relationship among farming households’ technical efficiency, dietary diversity and farm income in Kwara state, Nigeria. Respondents were randomly sampled from among the National Special Programe for food security (NSPFS) beneficiaries and non benficiaies across the 3 geo-political zones in the study area. Stochastic frontier model was used to estimate the respondents’ technical efficiency while the dietary diversity score and farm income were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used to assess the level of relationship among the indicators. The study revealed a significant linear relationship among households’ dietary diversity, farm income and technical efficiency. While technical efficiency was inversely related to farm income (r = -0.278, p = 0.01) and dietary diversity (r = -0.206, p = 0.05) on one hand, dietary diversity was positively related to farm income (r = 0.307, p = 0.05). The study has two important implications; first, increasing farm income may be of relevance if the goal of enhancing food security is pursued and benefits of technical efficiency growth may not necessarily translate into enhanced farm income and dietary diversity. This study therefore suggests the provision of infrastructures that would enable the farmers to access the benefits of improved technical efficiency.