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Abstract
Agricultural commercialization is key to the rural development process. It is however poorly understood how commercialization affects the nutritional intake by members of the farm household. This paper studies this relationship using household-level panel data collected in Rwanda, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia. Controlling for household fixed effects, we find that the effect of commercialization on the diversity and nutritional adequacy of the farm household s diet is positive, negative, or zero, depending on the country and measure of dietary intake. We also find a large variation between countries when investigating the underlying mechanisms. Depending on the country, commercialization affects dietary intake via higher food expenditure, via the diversity of food produced by the farmer, or directly .
Acknowledgement : The authors thank Ferko Bodn r, Joachim de Weerdt, Jo Swinnen, and Anita Bake for the valuable discussions and input.