Do you know: Africa: Better roads foster greater dietary diversity
in 2025
A balanced diet is important to reduce hunger and malnutrition. Researchers therefore recommend that small farmers in low- and middle-income countries should try to produce as many different foods as possible for their own consumption. However, a new study has now questioned this suggestion to some extent. It suggests that good access to regional markets is more important than farmers growing a wide variety of crops on their own small holdings. Better functioning markets increase the variety of foods available locally, which benefits the population as a whole. The results are being published in the journal Nature’s Food.
An unbalanced diet is bad for your health, but many people lack variety on their plates, especially in poorer countries. This is especially true for families on small farms, who make up the majority of the world’s undernourished population. One possible solution to this problem is for these farmers to grow as many different foods as possible for their own consumption. But how effective is this measure, and are there better alternatives?
To answer this question, researchers at the University of Bonn came across a comprehensive repository of data. They analyzed surveys of nearly 90,000 households in Africa, the majority of which are smallholders. The data was collected between 2008 and 2022 in Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. “Among other things, the surveys gave insight into the number of crops cultivated by the farmers and the number of animal species they kept,” explains Professor Dr. Matin Qaim from the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn. “Furthermore, the data contained information on the types of food being eaten in each household.”
Greater diversity has only a small impact on farmers’ fields
The analysis showed that farmers who produced a more diverse range of crops and animals on their farms had a more balanced diet as a result. “However, this had only a small effect,” says ZEF researcher Dr. Thanh Tung Nguyen, who conducted the study with Qaim. “Small-scale agricultural production in Africa tends to be very diverse anyway. It is more important to ensure good access to local and regional markets than to further improve diversity on each individual farm. The markets not only allow this allows farmers to sell their surplus food but also enables them to buy the foods they are lacking.”
In fact, an analysis of the foods consumed by farm families has shown that in most cases markets are already more important today for a healthy diet than the farmer’s own food production. On average, their own production did not account for about one third of the foods consumed in the analyzed farm households. The closer the families were to a local market, the more their diets were enriched with purchased foods. This was true for all six countries covered by the research. “The study showed that access to local and regional markets is crucial for a good quality diet,” emphasized Nguyen. However, there is still a lack of suitable infrastructure in many areas. The roads to the market are often so bad that the journey takes a long time and some of the produce is spoiled or damaged on the way.
Diversity in the region is more important than diversity in any one area
The researchers recommend that the focus should not only be on improving diversity in farmers’ fields but above all on improving infrastructure and thus giving people better access to markets. If the range of products grown by a single farmer is too diverse, this may even be disadvantageous as each crop has its own needs and requires special expertise. “It is better to focus on those crops that thrive particularly in the local conditions and then sell any surplus food,” explains Nguyen. At the same time, it certainly makes sense to diversify the crops to some extent from an environmental point of view and to reduce the risks for farmers.
“However, it is certainly not necessary for all small farms to grow all the products they need for a healthy diet themselves,” says Matin Qaim, who is also a member of the transdisciplinary research area (TRA) ” Sustainable Futures” and the PhenoRob Collection of Excellence. “It is enough when a large enough range of foods is produced throughout the region as a whole because then local families can buy a variety of food at markets.” By trading food in this way it is possible to divide the labor and so it is not only an important tool for improving people’s diets but also helps to promote economic development overall.