Debunking the One-size-fits-all Approach: Synergistic and Trade-off Effects of Collective Action on Household Food Security Among the Smallholder Farmers in Central Kenya
Authors: Nyambune Maindi Catherine , Nyarindo Wilckyster Nyateko 
Published: November 2024

Collective action is important in ameliorating the negative externalities in agriculture to promote household food security (HFS). This study explored the effects of efficiency and livelihood collective action initiatives (CAIs) on HFS along the pathways of production and income. The efficiency CAIs pursue efficiency-enhancing collective activities including input sourcing and output marketing. The livelihood CAIs engage in household livelihood and resilience enhancing collective activities such as provision of credit and informal insurance, pooling savings and acquisition of assets. A multinomial endogenous treatment effects (METE) model and an ordered probit model were employed on cross-sectional data drawn from 532 households from Murang’a County in central Kenya. The results revealed significant differences in HFS between the efficiency and livelihood CAIs. The differences were accounted for by the variations in household and organizational characteristics that determine the capacity to leverage HFS benefits along the pathways of production and income. Both efficiency and livelihood CAIs showed a positive significant effect on HFS through production. The results further showed that income positively influenced HFS among the livelihood members contrary to efficiency CAIs that showed negative HFS effects. The HFS across the combined pathways of income and production was lower for the efficiency CAIs than the livelihood CAIs. This was mainly due to the trade-off income effects exhibited by the former and the synergies accrued from income and production on the latter. The findings suggest that the overall performance of both efficiency and livelihood CAIs in leveraging HFS from joint income and production remains tentative. Therefore, a one-size-fits-all collective action promotional policy and program design approaches for improved HFS outcomes are inadequate. The study suggests a portfolio of context-specific collective action policies and interventions that match the differences between the efficiency and livelihood CAIs and their links to HFS. The policies would confer potential synergies, spillover effects and complementarities in strengthening the synergies while mitigating the trade-offs along the income and production pathways between the efficiency and livelihood CAIs. There is a need to enhance access to information, extension and advisory services and ICT among the members of the livelihood CAIs to improve production. It is important to incentivize the non-farm livelihood-enhancing economic activities among the livelihood members to fill the household food gaps arising from low production. It is also important to establish collective action funds and micro-credit schemes with affordable interest rates. This would help to tap the opportunities for credit sourcing and pooling savings among the livelihood members while promoting collective input sourcing and output marketing among the efficiency CAIs.