Nigeria: Backyard Gardens Became a Lifeline for Nigerian Households During COVID-19, Study Finds

Home gardening for advancing nutritional security and income generation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria
BY BIOENGINEER
October 3, 2026i
Excerpt:
The headline finding is stark: households that practiced home gardening scored considerably higher on dietary diversity than those that did not. When the researchers sorted households into low, medium, and high diversity categories, 67 percent of those in the high-diversity group, consuming six or more food groups, were home gardeners. By contrast, 77 percent of households in the low-diversity category, eating fewer than three food groups, had no garden at all. The pattern held across the middle tier as well, where 70 percent of households were non-gardeners. This distribution strongly suggests that garden produce, rich in vitamins A and C, iron, and protein, directly diversified diets at a moment when market access was unreliable and prices were climbing.
Quantifying this relationship rigorously required the researchers to confront a classic econometric problem. Households that choose to garden may differ systematically from those that do not, in age, education, resources, or motivation, so a naive comparison of gardeners and non-gardeners could produce biased estimates. To address this selection bias, the team employed a Heckpoisson regression, an extension of Heckman’s two-step correction adapted for count data. The model runs two equations simultaneously: a selection equation estimating which households choose to garden, and a Poisson outcome equation estimating dietary diversity among gardeners. Because the two equations shared predictors that could introduce collinearity problems, the researchers applied an exclusion restriction, omitting certain variables from the selection stage to obtain consistent estimates.
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Source: https://cityfarmer.info/nigeria-backyard-gardens-became-a-lifeline-for-nigerian-households-during-covid-19-study-finds/
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