Nutritional Knowledge Boosts the Dietary Gains of Agricultural Interventions in Madagascar

Agricultural interventions have the potential to improve food and nutrition security, partly by leveraging existing nutritional knowledge among beneficiaries. This study empirically examines the interaction between a nutrition‐sensitive agricultural intervention and women's nutritional knowledge in rural Madagascar. The study utilizes cross‐sectional data collected from 543 rural women of reproductive age (15–49 years) with at least one child aged between 6 and 23 months. We used multinomial endogenous switching regression and truncated regressions to analyze the independent and interaction effects of the agricultural intervention and women's nutritional knowledge. We find that both the agricultural intervention and women's nutritional knowledge contribute to the nutritional adequacy of women and children. Moreover, positive interaction effects were observed: Relatively high women's nutritional knowledge enhanced the positive effects of the agricultural intervention by an additional 29% for women's dietary diversity and 9% for children's dietary diversity. Policymakers and development partners need to take into account the interaction of agricultural interventions and the level of nutritional knowledge when designing interventions for improved food and nutrition security in rural areas with similar socioeconomic contexts.