Agricultural commercialization and household food security survey data
Description
The data was collected from 165 smallholder farmer households in Zhombe North Rural District, Zimbabwe using the 2017/ 2018 farming data in a cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from respondents and were used to test the following research hypotheses; (i) Household’s socio-economic characteristics differ between commercialized and non-commercialized smallholder farmers; (ii) Household’s socio-economic characteristics significantly affect agricultural commercialization in smallholder farmers; (iii) Agricultural commercialization has an impact on household food security in smallholder farmers; (iv) Household’s socio-economic characteristics significantly affect household food security in smallholder farmers. The captured data included the location of the village of the household, ward, age of the household head, gender, marital status, household head education level, household size, access to sanitary services, off-farm activities, household income, land size, use of credit in farming, agriculture training, area on which the crops were grown, the yield of the crops, the amount of the crops sold, the amount of income obtained from crop sales, etc. The crop output market participation share (COMPS) and the crop input market participation share (CIMPS) were computed using crop production, input use, and crop sales data. The inputs captured in this section included fertilizer, seed, and labor. Information on the household consumption frequencies of food in the eight food groups was captured and used to compute the food consumption scores then aggregated to form the modified food consumption score (MFCS). Food consumption scores for three different seasons of the year were collected. The three seasons have different implications on household food availability and access characteristics. Notable findings were that only 32% of the households had a COPMS value above 0.4 and 68% had COMPS value below 0.4 indicating very low levels of agricultural commercialization. The mean modified food consumption score for commercialized households was significantly higher than the value for non-commercialised households.