IS VARIETY THE SPICE OF LIFE?

This paper sheds light on the potential of crop diversification as a strategy to reduce poverty among smallholder farmers in Côte d’Ivoire. The paper combines a recent nationalrepresentative survey with unique geo-referenced high resolution precipitation data. To resolve endogeneity issues in the OLS specification, an IV approach is applied. The results reveal that crop diversification negatively affects welfare outcomes, although no causal effect can be inferred from the results. It was found that diversification strategies in Côte d’Ivoire are not driven by rainfall shocks. This result is remarkable given the evidence of a strong relationship between precipitation shocks and diversification strategies in Niger presented in a recent paper by Asfaw et al. (2018). This paper hence illustrates that conclusions drawn in the paper of Asfaw et al. are not to be generalized to other Sub-Saharan African countries. Ultimately, the findings in this paper indicate that the cultivation of rubber improves the chances of cocoa and coffee farmers to escape poverty. It is therefore recommended that actors in the respective value chains explore opportunities to symbiotically contribute to the realisation of a living income for their smallholder producers.