**1. Introduction**

For most developing countries, smallholder agriculture plays a pivotal role in enhancing rural livelihoods including households' food security [1,2]. This is mainly achieved through production of own food and incomes from sales of agricultural produce [3]. Despite recent significant strides in agricultural production, challenges such as food insecurity, under-nutrition and volatile food prices have persistently affected most smallholders [4–6]. In the wake of these challenges, there has been increased support for diversification of smallholder production as a strategy to enhance rural households' food security through increased food sufficiency and diversity [3,7–11].

At the farm level, production diversity entails smallholders maintaining a variety of species for both plants and animals [12]. The logical argument put forth is that increased diversity of smallholder production (for both crops and livestock) will enhance access to a diverse portfolio of food for consumption at the household level, thereby improving the dietary diversity of smallholder households. Fundamentally, a considerable body of research notes that agricultural diversity is vital in enhancing overall sustainability of food and agricultural systems by promoting agricultural lands' stability, productivity and resilience to shocks [13]. However, the debate on the role of smallholder farm production diversity on household food consumption diversity is far from conclusive. While some recent studies find a positive influence in this relationship [3,8,14], others have had mixed results [9,11]. Essentially, besides smallholder farm production diversity, household food consumption diversity may be influenced by market access and opportunities for off-farm income, among other factors [3,9]. Moreover, the implications of farm production diversity on food consumption of rural households may vary depending on, among other factors, agro-ecological characteristics which determine cropping systems pursued by smallholders [11,15].

Nevertheless, despite increased promotion of agricultural diversification for smallholders, empirical evidence on its role and implications in different smallholder contexts has lagged behind. In particular, evidence from diverse agro-ecological and market access settings is rare. We therefore use household data from diverse agro-ecological and market access contexts in rural Tanzania to answer three questions: (1) what is the nature and extent of farm production diversity among smallholders in the study regions? (2) What determines the observed farm production diversity? and (3) how does farm production diversity influence household food consumption diversity?

This article adds on previous literature in two ways. First, we use data from two distinct agro-ecological and market access contexts to analyze the farm production diversity-food consumption diversity relationship. This is important since this relationship may be masked by analyses that use national averages (such as Pellegrini and Tasciotti [8]). The objective is then to get insights on the nature and role of farm production diversity on food consumption diversity from diverse contexts as smallholder agriculture is inherently heterogeneous. Secondly, we use data on seasonal food consumption to further assess the potential of farm production diversity in contributing to seasonal food consumption diversity. In principle, smallholder households' consumption is inherently seasonal [16,17], with food insecurity being more prevalent in planting and pre-harvest season. Potentially, farm production diversity may enhance access to a variety of crops in different seasons [18], and hence improve food consumption diversity during different seasons.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows: The next section reviews related literature followed by section three which presents the study area, data and empirical strategy. Results are then presented in Section 4 and a discussion in Section 5. Section 6 gives a summary of main findings and draws emerging conclusions.
