Agriculture is central in order to achieve nutrition goals through the provision of food, energy and essential micronutrients for the physical and mental development of humans. Dietary diversity is a good indicator of human food security status. Using a dataset obtained from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), this paper examines the linkages between crop diversity and food security (measured as dietary diversity) among farming households in Nigeria using ordinary least squares, Poisson regression, and instrumental variables (IV) Poisson regression to estimate the relationship. In addition, we investigate the determinants that lead to the consumption of each food groups considered for generating dietary diversity using a logit regression model. The results show that food expenditure, asset ownership and location of households are the key factors driving the types of food consumed by the households. Furthermore, increased food expenditure and access to credit were found to positively influence food security. The result established a positive and significant relationship between crop diversity and dietary diversity. Our findings call for more attention to diet diversity, as well as the need to harmonize the roles of rural income improvement, especially through non-farm livelihood diversification in tackling multiple nutritional deficiencies in Nigeria.

A fruit is defined as the edible part of a plant that consists of the seeds and surrounding tissues, while vegetables are plants cultivated for their edible parts. Fruits and vegetables are important sources of micronutrients and dietary fibres and are components of a healthy diet, which help in preventing major diseases. Due to the fact that fruits and vegetables have health promoting properties, they contribute to dietary guidance. This chapter defines the basic concepts related to health benefits of fruits and vegetables, reviews the previous literature on health benefits of fruits and vegetables and enumerates the health benefits of some common fruits and vegetables. It also examined the dietary recommendation of fruits and vegetables in less developed countries as well as present situation of fruits and vegetables consumption with particular reference to sub-Saharan Africa.

Horticultural crops refer to fruits, vegetables, spices, and ornamental and medicinal plants which are rich sources of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Rapid urbanization and migration of rural populace to the more industrialized city center has led to poverty, malnutrition, low and insecure incomes, ill-health and other livelihood problems. These problems are mostly seen among the people residing in urban areas who have migrated from rural areas. Urban horticulture ensures food and nutrition security, healthy environment and sustainable livelihoods, employment generation, among others. As such, this chapter carried out an empirical review of the state of urban horticulture in cities across sub-Sahara Africa. This is to enumerate ways whereby the benefits of urban horticulture can be specified in the region. It concluded that governments in the different countries need the political will to actualize identified benefits of urban horticulture. The chapter then recommends sensitization of the pertinent stakeholders in countries across sub-Saharan Africa on the benefits of urban horticulture. Such stakeholders include politicians, policy makers and urban households. This is in order to integrate the concept into urban land use planning while carefully considering sustainability of the environment.

Market participation provides opportunities to farmers to benefit from trade by selling surplus produce and purchasing needed goods and services. Benefits and challenges to market participation faced by leafy vegetable farmers include lack of information about the markets and high transportation and transaction costs, among others, which do not allow leafy vegetable farmers to efficiently participate in markets. The study examined transaction costs involved in market participation by leafy vegetable farmers. Seventy leafy vegetable growers were randomly sampled. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a probit regression model. Most farmers were male (55.7%), between 41 and 50 years (40.0%), and married (88.6%). A majority of farmers (56.2%) had access to communication assets, 70.5% were not involved in group marketing, 76.8% source information from neighboring farmers, and 50.8% require information on buyer characteristics. Gender, years of experience in leafy vegetable production, being involved in group marketing, land ownership, and farm size all determine probability of market participation among leafy vegetable farmers.

This study assessed the knowledge uptake of stakeholders in fruit tree production training in Ibadan, Oyo State. A two-day training was organized for 50 beneficiaries in nursery practices, orchard establishment, and plantain/banana and citrus management. A pre-and post-assessment of the participants to determine knowledge uptake was carried out with a structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using percentages, means, and t-test. Results reveal that pre-and post-assessment mean scores of training modules taught were: rapid multiplication techniques of plantain/banana (0.74 and 7.14), nursery practices of citrus (0.56 and 15.38), citrus establishment and management (0.08 and 3.84), and economics of production (0.16 and 1.54), respectively. There was a significant difference in the post-evaluation and pre-evaluation scores (t=20.69, p=0.000), depicting the increase in knowledge of participants in the two-day training. The study concluded that the training effectively strengthened the capacity of beneficiaries. Thus, it is recommended that specialized and fully sponsored horticultural training packages be provided by the Federal Government for interested stakeholders for economic diversification and livelihood sustainability.