*5.2. The Influence of Farm Production Diversity on Food Consumption Diversity*

Farm production diversity has increasingly been considered important in improving food consumption especially for smallholder rural households [8,9,12,13]. Results from our analysis showed that this role is largely dependent on agro-ecological characteristics and market considerations. While farm production diversity played a significant and positive role for household food consumption diversity in Chamwino district, this role was rather small in Kilosa district. This was observed for both indicators of food consumption diversity, that is, HDDs and FVS. The significant role of farm production diversity in Chamwino may be partly attributed to the challenging agro-ecological characteristics and low market access. In these contexts, households resort to subsistence production to cater for food consumption needs. KC et al. [11] also observed the same pattern in a study in Nepal, where the role of crop diversity on food self-sufficiency was stronger in agro-ecological regions which are less accessible and with low market access. Similarly, Di Falco and Chavas [37] found that the benefits of crop biodiversity were more pronounced in ecologically fragile agricultural systems. Kilosa, on the other hand, has relatively better agro-ecology and subsequently a higher agricultural potential. The region has, however, far less diversity of production with mainly maize-legume cropping system

with little livestock integration. Cereals, vegetables, and pulses, seeds and nuts constitute the main groups of crops produced in the district.
