Abstract
Trees on farms provide livelihood benefits to households across Africa. To date, however, evidence on how such trees affect household wellbeing over time remains lacking. Evidence is especially sparse at the national level where it has particular value for policymaking. To address this knowledge gap, we use nationally-representative panel data from Uganda to examine how on-farm tree growing may affect two dimensions of household wellbeing: income and food security and nutrition. We analyzed household-level data from the 2005-06, 2010-11, and 2013-14 Ugandan National Panel Surveys, including measures on adoption and abandonment of trees on farms, demographic factors, and other socio-economic variables. We used a fixed-effect panel specification and probabilistic models to assess the relationship between the area devoted to trees on farms and household income and nutrition outcomes for 1395 households across Uganda. Our results suggest that having on trees on farms, especially fruit trees, is associated with improvements in both total household consumption and nutritional outcomes (measured by weight and wasting status of children under five). These findings suggest the important role trees on farms can play in poverty reduction and sustainable development efforts in Uganda and other countries in Africa and beyond.
Highlights
Trees on farms provide vital inputs to support the livelihoods of rural people across many lowand middle-income countries (LMICs)
We present three different model specifications for each dependent variable breaking the “trees on farms” variable down to proportion of farm plot area allocated to (i) all trees, (ii) fruit trees, and (iii) tree cash crops
We observed a significant relationship between the share of farm area allocated to trees and total consumption per adult equivalent
Summary
Trees on farms provide vital inputs to support the livelihoods of rural people across many lowand middle-income countries (LMICs). The contribution that trees on farms make to many farmers’ livelihoods often goes unacknowledged in national reporting, reflecting a lack of official interest in so-called “Cinderella species” that provide rural households in LMICs with a multitude of everyday products (Leakey and Newton, 1994). A number of case studies (e.g., Schreckenberg et al, 2006; Amadu et al, 2020) and country-scale studies (Miller et al, 2017) from Africa have demonstrated the contribution on-farm trees make to household income and food security.
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