Effect of Commercialization on Household Food Security Among Smallholder Pre-Cooking Bean Agriprenuers in Kenya.

Abstract:

Agricultural commercialization is a strategy proposed to alleviate food insecurity problem in Africa. This paper contributes to the debate on the effect of agricultural commercialization on household food security by assessing its effect on household food security. Cross-sectional data for the 2022/2023 farming season were collected from 413 smallholder pre-cooking bean farmer households in Kimilili Sub-County, Kenya. A propensity score matching model was used for data analysis. Crop output market participation share (COMPS) and crop input market participation share (CIMPS) were converted to Z scores and jointly used as a proxy of agricultural commercialization of a household. Findings indicated that agricultural commercialization had a significant negative Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) of -0.0731 and -0.0836 food insecurity experience scale scores using nearest neighbor and Kernel matching, respectively. The paper recommends a combination of agricultural commercialization with diversification to improve the household food access dimension of food security.