Pure subsistence-oriented agricultural production systems in this
study harbored rather low food plant species diversity and did not necessarily make smallholder farmers more food-secure during the study period
than farmers with market-oriented production such as sugarcane. Although
the limitations of this study include the small sample size (n = 30) with its
implications on statistical power of the regression models and the short
time scale of food security data collection (only one month), the study
provides important insights into enhancing both rural food security and
agrobiodiversity conservation because the data from farms are situated
within the wider context of agricultural market economy in the study
area. The study may also have benefited from inclusion of intra-species
diversity, but its measurement in the field was accompanied by inconsistent
use of local names by the interviewed farmers and identification challenges
from other sources.