Significance: Given that hunger and malnutrition are still widespread problems in many developing countries, the question of how to make agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive is of high relevance for research and policy. Many of the undernourished people in Africa and Asia are small-scale subsistence farmers. Diversifying production on these farms is often perceived as a promising strategy to improve dietary quality and diversity. This hypothesis is tested with data from smallholder farm households in Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi. Higher farm production diversity significantly contributes to dietary diversity in some situations, but not in all. Improving small farmers’ access to markets seems to be a more effective strategy to improve nutrition than promoting production diversity on subsistence farms.

Many of the world’s food-insecure and undernourished people are smallholder farmers in developing countries. This is especially true in Africa. There is an urgent need to make smallholder agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. African farm households are known to consume a sizeable part of what they produce at home. Less is known about how much subsistence agriculture actually contributes to household diets, and how this contribution changes seasonally. We use representative data from rural Ethiopia covering every month of one full year to address this knowledge gap. On average, subsistence production accounts for 58% of rural households’ calorie consumption, that is, 42% of the calories consumed are from purchased foods. Some seasonal variation occurs. During the lean season, purchased foods account for more than half of all calories consumed. But even during the main harvest and post-harvest season, purchased foods contribute more than one-third to total calorie consumption. Markets are even more important for dietary quality. During all seasons, purchased foods play a much larger role for dietary diversity than subsistence production. These findings suggest that strengthening rural markets needs to be a key element in strategies to improve food security and dietary quality in the African small-farm sector.

Oil palm plantations are intensively managed agricultural systems that increasingly dominate certain tropical regions. Oil palm monocultures have been criticized because of their reduced biodiversity compared to the forests they historically replaced, and because of their negative impact on soils, water, and climate. We experimentally test whether less intensive management schemes may enhance biodiversity and lessen detrimental effects on the environment while maintaining high yields. We compare reduced vs. conventional fertilization, as well as mechanical vs. chemical weed control (with herbicides) in a long-term, full-factorial, multidisciplinary experiment. We conducted the experiment in an oil palm company estate in Sumatra, Indonesia, and report the results of the first 2 years. We measured soil nutrients and functions, surveyed above- and below-ground organisms, tracked oil palm condition and productivity, and calculated plantation gross margins. Plants, aboveground arthropods, and belowground animals were positively affected by mechanical vs. chemical weed control, but we could not detect effects on birds and bats. There were no detectable negative effects of reduced fertilization or mechanical weeding on oil palm yields, fine roots, or leaf area index. Also, we could not detect detrimental effects of the reduced fertilization and mechanical weeding on soil nutrients and functions (mineral nitrogen, bulk density, and litter decomposition), but water infiltration and base saturation tended to be higher under mechanical weeding, while soil moisture, and microbial biomass varied with treatment. Economic performance, measured as gross margins, was higher under reduced fertilization. There might be a delayed response of oil palm to the different management schemes applied, so results of future years may confirm whether this is a sustainable management strategy. Nevertheless, the initial effects of the experiment are encouraging to consider less intensive management practices as economically and ecologically viable options for oil palm plantations.

Oil palm cultivation has experienced explosive expansion in recent decades. Although the oil palm boom has serious environmental and socioeconomic consequences, only environmental issues have garnered attention in public discussion and synthesis studies. In this study, we synthesize the literature on the socioeconomic impacts of oil palm expansion across various observation units and spatial and temporal scales, which is of significant relevance to policymakers, researchers, and the wider public. Our review demonstrates that oil palm expansion is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has significantly helped both producing and non-producing countries’ economies by facilitating the (re)export of crude palm oil and its byproducts and by creating employment opportunities. This has stimulated rural economies, led to rural poverty reduction, and improved food security and diets for rural households in producer countries. On the other hand, it has increased conflicts and tension between local communities and agro-industrial companies, worsened workers’ conditions, and widened domestic economic inequality between producing and non-producing areas within a given producer country. Monetary quantification of the costs of oil palm’s negative environmental and social impacts indicates that the loss of ecosystem services and social services far outweighs the benefits derived from the increased production of oil palm. The direct income benefits through harvest sales and employment are more evident in the Southeast Asia production frontier, where oil palm cultivation and marketing are relatively advanced and well-integrated into global value chains. The negative outcomes are observed in all oil palm production regions, with more negative effects on food security in the African production frontiers. We propose multiple actionable research and policy recommendations that may jointly lead to inclusive and sustainable socioeconomic (and environmental) outcomes in oil palm cultivation. The socioeconomic consequences of oil palm expansion at the global level, in the African and American production frontiers, and the role of gender in oil palm production systems remain understudied. Hence, studies should be conducted.