Green assets; quantifying contributions of autochthonous tree-like perennials to food and nutrition security resilience in southern Ethiopian Highlands.

Abstract

Abstract Efficient small-farm food systems produce a significant portion of global food supply and can support relatively high population densities. Yet chronic food insecurity on small farms persists as poverty traps when socio-ecological and techno-cultural drivers reinforce negative outcomes for individuals and households. Understudied food socionatures in traditional and autochthonous farming systems may offer sustainable pathways to food security and resilience. Here, we study the food and nutrition security contributions, and asset-like characteristics of enset, a perennial tree-like staple crop for 20-million people, indigenous to and domesticated in Ethiopia. We apply the law of diminishing returns to identify asset dynamics and use spatially informed hierarchical mixture models to estimate the marginal contribution of enset to four common measures of food and nutrition security. We find mature enset acts like a green asset with flexible timing for a relatively large one-time harvest and is associated with significantly lower childhood stunting, higher diet diversity, lower levels and shorter duration of food insecurity. Increased enset cultivation in conjunction with reduced mature stocks implies enset is a strategic asset, protecting food security in the face of change. Overall, a farmers' stock of mature enset represents a better indicator of food and nutrition security than existing variables, and may be more sensitive to cultural or socio-economically mediated resilience status due to its relevance in the local food socionature. Autochthonous approaches to intensification may partially explain the bifurcation of successful small farms to those falling into policy resistant poverty traps. We recommend the inclusion and potential formalization of a wider range of green assets, such as trees and tree-like perennials, in research on sustainable rural livelihoods and food and nutrition security.