Despite the many potential benefits of legume cultivation, there is scarce empirical
evidence on the effects of improved legume technologies on household food security and
nutrition. This paper begins to fill that knowledge gap by empirically estimating the effects of
adoption of cereal-legume intercropping and cereal-legume rotation on indicators of food
security and nutrition for smallholder farm households in Zambia. The results indicate that
cereal-legume rotation is positively and statistically significantly associated with household
dietary diversity, months of adequate household food provisioning, and calorie and protein
production, but is significantly negatively correlated with net crop income. In contrast, we find
little evidence of statistically significant cereal-legume intercropping effects on the food security
and nutrition status of Zambian smallholder farm households.