Is subsistence enough? Examining the impact of household farm bio-diversity on dietary diversity in Bukidnon, Philippines.

Hunger and malnutrition have plagued the developing world for decades. Not only are individuals not meeting their daily energy requirements, but individuals are also not meeting their daily micronutrient requirements. Many researchers and health institutions recommend consuming a diverse diet to increase the likelihood of meeting nutritional requirements. In the literature debate exists concerning whether households should focus on increasing income by commercializing and improve their diets by purchasing a more diverse mix of foods, or if households should diversify production at home in order to meet nutritional needs. This thesis uses household data from Bukidnon, Philippines to develop a Production Diversity Score (PDS) that is used to examine the impact of farm biodiversity on an individual’s Dietary Diversity Score (DDS) and the likelihood that individuals are meeting their micronutrient needs. The results suggest that compared to raising production diversity, a more effective route to increasing dietary diversity is to increase income and total expenditures of the household. A relationship appears to exist between children’s diets and production diversity but the relationship is weak and varies with changes in the specification of the econometric model. Results suggest that to increase dietary diversity and the likelihood that individuals are meeting daily dietary needs, households should in fact commercialize and increase their incomes. Moreover, it appears that improvements in infrastructure could have a significant impact on diets in this study area