Does the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices matter for household food security? Evidence from rural Burkina Faso

Abstract

In Sub-Saharan Africa, food insecurity remains a major challenge, partly due to low agricultural productivity. Sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) offer a promising pathway to improve food security among rural households. However, few studies have examined their contributions in this region. This research analyses the determinants of the adoption of SAP and their individual and combined effects on household food security. To achieve this, a multinomial endogenous treatment effect regression model was applied to data from the Permanent Agricultural Survey of 5 023 agricultural households. The data covers the 2020–2021 agricultural season and were collected by the Ministry of Agriculture and Hydro-Agricultural Development of Burkina Faso. The results show, on the one hand, that the adoption of SAPs is influenced by household socioeconomic and demographic factors, plot-specific characteristics and agroecological zones. On the other hand, the results show that the adoption of SAPs improves household food security, with a greater positive effect in the case of combined adoption. Our results suggest that efforts to improve household food security should focus on promoting the combined adoption of SAPs more than their isolated adoption.