The impact of export crop production on nutritional status in Côte d'Ivoire

Abstract

In exploring the implications of the commercialization of agriculture on nutrition in Côte d'Ivoire, this paper found that sales of export crops, combined with the domestic marketing of food crops, represent the most important sources of incomes for rural households, rich and poor alike. Increasing the price of the heavily taxed export crops, cocoa and coffee, will raise incomes throughout the income distribution. Increasing the profitability and productivity of cotton will not only raise rural incomes but will also have positive distributional consequences. A reduced-form nutrition model was estimated in order to examine the impact of income, as well as the allocation of land to the production of the major export crops rather than to food crops, on nutritional status. Results indicate that higher incomes improve long-term nutritional status, and that the share of land allocated to export crops does not affect the nutritional status of preschool-aged children, even when controlling for income. In combination, these facts suggest that raising incomes through exploiting comparative advantage in export crops, such as coffee, cocoa, and cotton, will have positive nutritional outcomes in Côte d'Ivoire.