Social Organization, Resource Management, and Child Nutrition in the Taita Hills, Kenya

A comparative and longitudinal ecological analysis is used to explore agricultural sources of variation in child nutritional status in the Taita Hills, Kenya. National policies, formal institutions, the natural environment, and the local-level social organization of agricultural resource access define the agrarian context within which distinct production strategies emerge. The effects of alternative production choices on child nutrition are neither consistent nor unidimensional, arguing for a rethinking of conventional approaches to food policy decision making.