Urban Agriculture Adoption, Diet Variety and Rural Support Among Urban Zimbabwe Households

ABSTRACT Increasing rates of urbanisation, high unemployment and the absence of social security in developing countries are putting pressure on urban households' diets, prompting some to advocate urban agriculture as a fallback. Because households voluntarily choose to engage in urban agriculture, it is important to account for the self‐selection inherent in practising urban agriculture when evaluating the efficacy of urban agriculture in cushioning urban households' diets. Accordingly, we estimate the effects of practising urban agriculture on household dietary diversity using the endogenous switching model with a count outcome (ESMC) based on four pooled annual cross‐section surveys of Zimbabwean households from 2019 to 2023. We employ propensity score matching (PSM) as a secondary robustness check, acknowledging that it addresses selection only on observed characteristics. We offer three major findings. First, large households, and households headed by women, older heads and those that are married and living together with their spouses are ceteris paribus more likely to practise urban agriculture. Second, practising urban agriculture increases the likelihood that urban households will have greater dietary diversity. Third, urban agriculture improves dietary diversity only for the sub‐population of households that do not receive support from rural relatives. The findings of this study confirm the potential role of urban agriculture in improving the food and nutrition security of urban households without support from relatives in rural areas in developing countries.