Market Access Is Associated with Dietary Adequacy, While Own Production Remains Relevant under Rural Vulnerability

Rising hunger, food-price pressure, and constrained public support make the local pathways through which rural households obtain food central to diet quality.

This study examines how two food-source pathways, practical access to township food markets and diversified own production, are associated with diet quality among rural Chinese households and whether these associations differ by income group and poverty-county status.

The analysis uses 38,386 balanced observations from a 2019-2020 observational panel of the National Rural Fixed Observation Point survey. Diet quality is measured with the revised Chinese Diet Balance Index (DBI_16), which separately scores overall dietary imbalance, insufficiency, and excess. Road-adjusted township distance (village-to-township straight-line distance divided by the village road-hardening rate) measures the transport burden of reaching township food markets. Production diversity counts the food groups a household produces. Panel models include village and year fixed effects, with standard errors clustered at the village level.

Purchased food supplied more than 80% of energy and most measured nutrients. Greater transport burden was associated with more insufficiency and imbalance but lower excess scores. Production diversity was associated with less insufficiency and imbalance, with clear associations for insufficiency among low-income households and across multiple outcomes in poverty counties. In a standardized within-province comparison, road-adjusted township distance showed the larger association with imbalance and insufficiency. Self-consumption patterns were consistent with two roles: constrained reliance under greater transport burden and dietary support under more diverse production.

In rural China, market dependence makes practical access to township food markets broadly relevant to diet quality, with easier access linked to less insufficiency and imbalance but greater excess, while diversified own production plays a distinct role, remaining relevant to dietary adequacy for more vulnerable households. Market integration does not eliminate the nutritional relevance of own production under binding local constraints.