Why do Farmers Grow Diversity? Reaching Beyond Own-Consumption and Agricultural Income to Support Food Security and Nutrition

Background: Having diverse crops and animals on small farms is broadly seen as a way to support both farmer nutrition and environmental resilience. However, studies often find only a weak statistical relationship between the diversity produced and the diversity consumed. Understanding why smallholder farmers produce diversity is central both for operationalizing agriculture-nutrition linkages and for supporting resilient agro-ecosystems. Objective: This study examines farmers’ own reasons for producing diversity and explores how these reasons shape the production-diet relationship. Methods: As part of a mixed methods, participatory action research program in highland Ecuador, a community researcher conducted activity-based interviews with Indigenous and mestizo/a farmers ( n = 26); interviews were analyzed using cognitive mapping and cultural domain analysis. Results: On average, farmers cultivated 49 different edible plants and five types of livestock, but they regularly consumed only about half of them. Products were consumed “rarely or never” because of availability limitations, preparation difficulty, taste, or because they were mainly used for other purposes. Farmers grew diverse edible plants for many reasons beyond consumption, including economic (88% of participants), socio-affective (85%), agronomic (50%), and health-and-safety (31%) motives. Conclusions: The findings help explain why statistical associations between production and diet are often small. The importance of social and emotional (affective) values in informing farmers’ production decisions adds a critical, yet underexplored, dimension to a literature that otherwise centers the assumption that farmers mostly make their decisions based on instrumental, cause-and-effect pathways. Lessons provide insights to better align programming with farmers’ endogenous decision-making rationale.