| Summary: | South Africa has largely been characterized as food secure at the national level but food insecure at a household level. This paper explores the impact of value chain participation on food insecurity among smallholder farmers in Swayimane KwaZulu-Natal. Purposive sampling technique was used to sample 51 smallholder vegetable farmers who were value chain participants at various levels. The study uses the Household Food Insecurity Access scale (HFIAS) and the Instrumental Variable Poisson model to assess the household food security status and the factors that influence the food security status among the smallholder farmers. The results show that 66.7% of the farmers in the sample were food secure, 17.65% were mildly food insecure, 7.84% were moderately food insecure and 7.84% were severely food insecure. Value chain participation, age of the household head, marital status, formal education, farm income, lease rent on land, access to NGOs, access to agricultural agency, access to credit, access to television, access to extension services and access to an irrigation scheme were significant in impacting household food insecurity. The study concluded that participation in value chains was significant in reducing food insecurity among smallholder farmers in Swayimane and therefore, strategies focusing on enhancing value chain participation among farmers should be adopted along with interventions that enhance value chain participation among smallholder farmers. As empirically posited by the results of this study, the more households are involved in the vegetable value chain, the better the household food intake and food security they become.
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