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Child diet diversity and irrigation expansion in the global south

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 905–913 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Irrigation expansion has been promoted as a way to improve global nutrition and health by increasing food production and income. However, its impact on the health and nutrition of local communities is unclear and might vary substantially across contexts, depending on who reaps the benefits and how. Here we combine georeferenced survey data from 9,144 rural communities (70,817 households) across 26 global south countries with data on global patterns of irrigation infrastructure changes to examine linkages between irrigation expansion and local changes in child diet diversity—a key indicator of micronutrient intake and development. We found a positive link between irrigation and child diet diversity, with substantial regional differences. Irrigation benefits were concentrated in regions without sufficient water resources to support it, suggesting trade-offs between dietary improvements and water stress. By contrast, irrigated areas with sufficient water tend to produce higher fractions of cash crops and export-oriented food items, with weaker associations to improved local diets. These findings suggest that while irrigation access is associated with overall improvements of child diet diversity in rural communities, water stress conditions can influence these outcomes. Nutrition-sensitive strategies thus need to be considered as an essential component of sustainable irrigation planning in the future.

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Fig. 1: Global distribution of rural cluster-level child diet diversity and water stress status of irrigation expansion.
Fig. 2: Association between irrigation status and child IDDS.
Fig. 3: Changing characteristics of crop production for DHS clusters located in areas of irrigation expansion.

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Data availability

All data used in this study are publicly available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6740334 (ref. 43) or from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

All code used in the study is publicly available via GitHub at https://github.com/piyushm9/IrrigationNutrition or upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

K.F.D. was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant 2022-67019-368 37180. We would like to express gratitude to P. Mondal, C. Ringler and R. Vargas for their valuable feedback on the manuscript, which greatly contributed to its improvement.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Piyush Mehta & Kyle Frankel Davis

  2. Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA, USA

    Piyush Mehta

  3. Eawag–Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Marc Muller

  4. Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Food Systems Program, Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Meredith T. Niles

  5. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Kyle Frankel Davis

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  1. Piyush Mehta
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  4. Kyle Frankel Davis
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Contributions

P.M. and K.F.D. conceived the study. K.F.D. coordinated the study. P.M., M.M. and K.F.D. designed all analyses. P.M. and K.F.D. collected the data. P.M. performed the analysis. P.M. and K.F.D. wrote the first draft. P.M., M.M., M.T.N. and K.F.D. contributed to manuscript writing and revision.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Piyush Mehta or Kyle Frankel Davis.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Nicolas Gerber, Giacomo Zanello and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Mehta, P., Muller, M., Niles, M.T. et al. Child diet diversity and irrigation expansion in the global south. Nat Sustain 8, 905–913 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01584-y

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