The role of improved market access for small-scale organic farming transition: Implications for food security

Abstract

Better access to markets allows small producers to reliably sell more produce, at higher prices and with better quality. Following the recognition of the importance of production-marketing nexus, it is, therefore, necessary to investigate the role of efficient markets for small-scale organic farming, more so, whether the orientation of the farmers to market will have any implications for the food security welfare of the farmers. Using survey data from rural Nigeria, this paper applies a multiple-treatment endogenous switching regression framework to control for the potential endogeneity of market orientation and the adoption of organic farming, hence evaluated the moderating effects of market orientation on the relationship between organic farming adoption and food security. We find that market orientation has a positive and significant effect on the food security of both the farmers who adopt and those who did not adopt organic farming. Also, the study found that market orientation positively moderates the effect of organic farming on food security. Although the adoption of organic farming has a significant positive effect on food security irrespective of their market orientation, its effect is higher among farmers who are market-oriented than farmers that are not market-oriented. This result suggests efforts in the transition to organic farming among smallholder farmers can benefit policies and programmes aimed at integrating them into more inclusive and profitable market systems.