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Assessing the Impacts of Agrobiodiversity Maintenance on Food Security Among Farming Households in Sri Lanka’s Dry Zone

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Abstract

Farmers’ maintenance of agrobiodiversity is fundamental to global food security, particularly in a world increasingly affected by climate change. Biodiversity helps to buffer agroecosystems from stresses like climatic variability, and the crop genetic diversity conserved with biodiverse agroecosystems is critical for plant breeding both locally and globally. Yet, despite these benefits, few studies have directly assessed the implications of household–level agrobiodiversity maintenance on household food security. Drawing on survey data collected in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota District, we evaluated the plant diversity maintained by small–scale farming households in both homegardens and crop fields and determined the relationships between this diversity and their households’ food security. We also considered how a suite of additional demographic, household, community, and farm characteristics relate to both the plant diversity maintained by a household and their food security. Similar to previous studies, the age of the agricultural decision-maker and the age and size of households’ homegardens positively correlated with the overall species richness of farming systems. Older homegardens were also identified to be more evenly distributed in their species abundance, and market–oriented households had significantly higher species richness but lower Shannon Indices. Most notably, household socioeconomic status and material wealth were important to both agrobiodiversity maintenance and household food security, while no significant relationships between species richness and food security measures were detected. These findings suggest that effort aiming to increase the food security of small–scale farming households in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, should target those farming households with a paucity of socioeconomic assets, as these households lack both agroecological and economic resources to overcome shocks, such as those associated with climate change.

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Acknowledgements

We would also like to thank our collaborators at National Building and Research Organization, Sri Lanka and Kalpani Wijesinghe, our fieldwork assistant nonpareil.

Funding

Support for this project was provided by a grant from the National Science Foundation (EAR-1204685).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

    Nicholas E. Williams

  2. Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Nicholas E. Williams & Amanda R. Carrico

  3. Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka

    Indika Edirisinghe & P. A. Jayamini Champika

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  1. Nicholas E. Williams
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  2. Amanda R. Carrico
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  3. Indika Edirisinghe
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  4. P. A. Jayamini Champika
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Correspondence to Nicholas E. Williams.

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Williams, N.E., Carrico, A.R., Edirisinghe, I. et al. Assessing the Impacts of Agrobiodiversity Maintenance on Food Security Among Farming Households in Sri Lanka’s Dry Zone. Econ Bot 72, 196–206 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-018-9418-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-018-9418-2

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