Food And Nutrition Security Impacts Of Moringa: Evidence From Southern Ethiopia

The contributions of Moringa to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in developing countries were massive. Its production has to be more than increased to maintain its potential role in-curving food and nutrition insecurity sufferings in these areas. However, empirical researches evaluating its impact at smallholder farmer level were missing to confirm. The current research aims to add to fill the missing literature gaps through a survey study on selected 464 producer and non-producer smallholder farmers from Wolaita and Gamo Gofa zones, southern Ethiopia. The Propensity to Score Matching (PSM) model was used to estimate the impact of Moringa production on household food and nutrition security. The validity of the model was checked and found binding to observe the causal effect of dependent and outcome variables in controlling selection bias. The finding indicated positive and significant differences among Moringa producer and non-producer smallholder farmers in selected food and nutrition security proxy variables, weekly calorie intake and food consumption score (FCS). Farmers producing Moringa were found more food and nutritionally secure than non-producers. It requires policies and development actions to perform on ways to advance the production and intensification of Moringa production in dry parts of the country.