Land Consolidation, Specialization, and Household Diets: Evidence from Rwanda

Since 2007 the Rwandan government has pursued a large-scale Crop Intensification Program entailing land consolidation and a regionalized approach to crop production support. As agricultural development is generally associated with improved food and nutrition security outcomes, the Rwandan development strategy has supported the increased crop specialization by smallholders with the assumption that as incomes improve, households could increasingly rely on markets for maintaining diverse and nutritious diets. Despite its scale, no detailed assessment of the causal relationship between land consolidation under CIP and food and nutrition security outcomes has been carried out. Using recent household survey data and a propensity score matching difference-in-difference method, we find that participation in land consolidation activities had an ambiguous effect. On the one hand it positively impacted on consumption of roots and tubers, while on the other, had negative effect on meat, fish and fruits consumption and potential availability of vitamin B12 in participants diets. The share of consolidated land, the emphasis on cultivating only certain priority crops, and market access are identified as important explanatory factors . This calls for a review of CIP implementation practices so that its capacity to achieve broad food and nutrition security objectives is further improved. Acknowledgement