**5. Conclusions and lessons**

This study examined the effect of awareness of the nutritional benefits of OFSP and food insecurity in the household on the decision to grow OFSP. The study used multivariate probit regression technique, which controls for interdependence/correlation in varietal adoption decisions, to test the effect of participation in the project (a proxy for awareness of nutritional benefits of OFSP) and food insecurity in the household on the decision to plant the three most important OFSP varieties.

The study finds a strong evidence that awareness of the nutritional benefits of OFSP increased the likelihood of a farmer deciding to plant OFSP varieties. It also finds that household food security status increased the probability that a farmer grows OFSP. Some other conditioning variables also affect the decision to plant improved sweetpotato varieties, including the OFSP varieties. In particular, access to agroecology of the area and endowment with financial and physical assets significantly increased the decision to plant improved sweetpotato varieties. This study therefore concludes that household food insecurity has a significant effect on the likelihood of farm households deciding to grow the OFSP varieties.

The findings of this study have several lessons for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries. First, they imply that interventions aimed at sensitizing farmers on the importance of OFSP need to be coupled with providing access to clean planting materials. In the Marando Bora project, these activities were coupled to ensure not only that farmers have access to better performing (i.e., higher yielding) clean planting material but also were aware of this as well as the nutritional benefits of the growing and consuming OFSP. Indeed, the finding shows that awareness of these benefits is instrumental in the decision to adoption OFSP.

Second, the study demonstrates that sweetpotato farmers are concerned about moisture availability when making the decision to produce OFSP. This finding is not new. Similar findings are presented in [30]. It, however, emphasizes one major challenge farmers' experience, namely, how to conserve planting material over the dry period for next season planting. Thus, efforts to promote the growing and consumption of OFSP need to train farmers on conservation of the planting material. Some of the strategies that can be used in this endeavor are discussed in Refs. [30, 31].

Another major lesson from this study relates to the finding on distance to market, a proxy for transaction costs, reduces the decision to grow OFSP. While this finding is expected, it implies the need to reduce the distances farmers have to access the market since it has implications on the commercialization of OFSP. Since distance to market was measured in terms of time taken to reach produce market, the lesson here is that local governments need to invest in improving the time farmers take to reach the market with their produce. Doing so may require simple improvement the state of the road rather than creating new physical markets in local communities.

The finding that food security status of the households affects the decision to grow OFSP also has implications for policy. In particular, this finding confirms the importance of sweetpotato as source of macronutrients (i.e., starch) and micronutrients (i.e., vitamin A). It therefore implies the need to continue the efforts to upscale the growing of sweetpotato by poor rural households who face the dual food security problem of access and nutrition and also do not have the means to afford food supplements.
