(Working paper) Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SAPs) as determinants for food security

Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SAPs) as determinants for food security. March 2023 This paper examines household determinants for adopting sustainable agricultural practices and uses different food insecurity measures to identify household food conditions, suggesting that adopting Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SAPs) improves food security in a household. Among different SAPs, the two important ones are crop rotation, and mixed cropping. I include multiple food insecurity measures to obtain an integrated approach of the food situation in each household including Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and Prevalence and Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS). According to the findings, adopting SAPs is affected by different factors depending on the practice and both SAPs are found to improve food security. Moreover, most important determinants for adopting SAPs are identified. Specifically, when the head of the household can read or write and has attended school, as well as participation in extension programs increases the odds of adopting crop rotation. On the other hand, adopting mixed cropping is positively affected when the head of the household is male. My work suggests that both SAPs reduce food insecurity based on FIES and HFIAS Prevalence measures. Crop rotation leads to an up to 26 percent decrease of food insecurity. Additionally, HDDS is found to increase when mixed cropping is adopted.