Smallholders' food security between farming and migration. Evidence from five Northern and Eastern African countries

In developing countries, the relationship between migration, agriculture, and food security is characterised by complex feedback loops. In the absence of working markets, consumption and production decisions are inseparable. We develop a theoretical model where smallholders maximise food security by allocating labour to farming or migration, and farm production to self-consumption or sales, subject to remittance and farm production functions and a cash constraint. We estimate the model empirically by applying three-stage-least-squares to an original dataset of 5,300 crop and fish farmers from five African countries. We found that self-consumption improves food security, but larger benefits are generated by cash income, which in turn is positively related to farm sales. Reduction of household members through migration improves food security but the impact of remittance investment is unclear, as confirmed by a propensity score matching analysis. Our findings suggest prioritising cash crops, loss reduction, and productivity increase to invest labour off-farm.