Sustainable Agricultural Development in Developing Countries: Regional Approaches

[2F201] Synergy or Trade-off? The Impact of Horticulture Commercialization, Gender Decision-making, and Climate-smart Horticulture Practices on Household Food Security in Jimma, Ethiopia

*Asmiro Abeje FIKADU¹, Hisako Nomura¹, Girma Gezimu Gebre², Payal Shah³, Yoshifumi Takahashi¹, Mitsuyasu Yabe¹ (1. Kyushu University, 2. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program, Ritsumeikan University, 3. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST))

Keywords:CSH, Endogenous treatment, Extended ordered probit model, Food security, SHEP

Horticulture commercialization, gender-based decision-making, and adopting Climate-smart Horticulture (CSH) practices constitute pivotal frameworks for enhancing household food security. Despite the growing literature on these topics, their effects on smallholder farmers' food security have remained unclear, with debates suggesting either a synergistic relationship or a trade-off. This study addresses the prevailing gap by examining how these factors influence household food security in Jimma, Ethiopia. Data were collected from 409 randomly selected farmers, including Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion (SHEP) project participants. We employ an extended ordered probit model with endogenous treatment to address endogeneity, complemented by propensity score matching to remove selection bias. The results show that the SHEP intervention significantly improves food security through commercialization, women-alone and joint decision-making, and climate-smart horticulture practices. Specifically, farmers in the treated group who commercialize their horticultural harvests significantly improve food security compared to control groups, suggesting a synergistic association rather than a trade-off. The results also show that 84.8% of women-alone decision-makers and 78.2% of joint decision-makers in the treated group are food secure, compared to 57.2% of women-alone decision-makers and 21.9% of joint decision-makers in the control group. Furthermore, about 79.3% of adopters of CSH practices in the treated group are food secure, compared to 29.9% in the control group. This shows that the SHEP intervention upholds those practices and highlights their effectiveness in improving household food security. Thus, this study underscores the advantages of integrating market-oriented extension approaches such as SHEP with joint decision-making and climate-smart horticulture practices to improve food security in similar contexts.