Homegarden diversity and food security in southern Mexico

Jennifer Castañeda-Navarrete

doi:10.1007/s12571-021-01148-w

Abstract

Home gardens are recognised in the literature for their contribution to food security, yet the process by which agrobiodiversity and household characteristics mediate this relationship is less well understood. This paper contributes to fill this research gap by drawing on a multi-site case study in the Yucatán region in Mexico. By applying regression analysis, the significance of the association between home garden diversity and food security is confirmed. Plant diversity is found to have a positive association with food consumption scores and the frequency of vegetable intakes. The number of animals used for food purposes is also found to have positive and significant associations with food consumption scores and frequency of meat intakes. However, the dimension and the significance of these positive associations were found to vary among communities and quantiles of the distribution of food security measures. In the households studied, younger individuals and better-educated people, males and Spanish speakers were more likely to engage in jobs in urban areas. Engagement in urban jobs was found to involve complementarities with the overall plant diversity of home gardens, but also trade-offs with the diversity of vegetables and other herbs used for food purposes and with the abundance of animals raised for food purposes.

Highlights

In 2018, about 2 billion people struggled to gain regular access to sufficient nutritious and sufficient food
This research contributes to the understanding of how household characteristics and agrobiodiversity mediate the impact of home gardens on food security
Positive associations are found between plant diversity and animal abundance and different measures of food security

Summary

Introduction

In 2018, about 2 billion people struggled to gain regular access to sufficient nutritious and sufficient food. More than 820 million experienced hunger (FAO, UNICEF, WFP and WHO 2019). The most recent edition in particular highlights the rise of hunger in almost all African sub-regions, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Western Asia (FAO, UNICEF, WFP and WHO 2019). Governments and development practitioners have used agricultural interventions to improve people’s food security and nutrition since the 1960s (Masset et al 2012). Interventions focused on increasing agricultural production and productivity, whereas more recent approaches have centred on the quality of food through fortification and production diversification (Masset et al 2012; World Bank 2007; Ruel et al 2018). Home gardens are an example of the latter type of interventions

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Discussion

Conclusion