IFAD came into being and matured in a period during which fundamental changes in the way nutrition was conceived were taking place within the global debate on development. The Fund has contributed actively to stimulating that debate and has also taken steps to field test nutrition objectives in its investment projects.

The knowledge gathered from field operations, combined with participation in the global debate, has sharpened IFAD’s focus on issues that link poverty and agricultural development with nutrition concerns. The lessons learned have led to a phase of intensified activities in the nineties, towards an integrated treatment of nutrition, agriculture and rural development.

A concern in these operations has been the need for developing appropriate conceptual frameworks and tools to guide the design of field operations, the choice of instrumentalities, implementation and monitoring and evaluation (M&E).

Although still evolving, IFAD’s idea in this endeavour is presented as a contribution to the current debate on nutrition as an important dimension in agricultural development.

Nutrition: an outcome of multiple processes

Poor nutrition is an outcome of adverse conditions with immediate, underlying and basic causes. Box 1 depicts the conceptual framework for understanding the causes of malnutrition now gaining ground among development agencies and government institutions. It is also the point of departure for the analytical framework developed in this paper.

The immediate causes of malnutrition are inadequate dietary intake, a high prevalence of disease or, most frequently, an interaction between the two. The organization of underlying causes into three general clusters – related to food insecurity, poor health conditions and inadequate care – emphasizes the need for simultaneous action in all three areas. Under these general categories are a wide range of causes, including inadequate weaning practices, lack of immunizations, poor water supplies, inadequate household food supplies and women’s time constraints. Most development interventions are concentrated at this level. Underlying causes are the product of yet more basic causes, such as the ways in which potential and existing resources are controlled and managed. What resources are or will be available in a given situation, and the factors thatrestrict access to those resources for certain groups of people, are rooted in these basic structures.

This framework points to a key role for IFAD in addressing nutrition problems at two levels: (i) by strengthening the household resource base (i.e., food and other relevant livelihood needs) through investment projects that expand and improve the productivity of rural households through increased output, raised incomes and other poverty-alleviation measures and (ii) by enhancing the target groups’ control and management over these resources through their active participation in all aspects of the projects. Exactly how a household will allocate its total resources for purposes relevant to improving nutrition – whether for health, food or care – can never be fully predicted, hence the case for relevant education about household expenditure and nutrition.

Box 1: The Causes of Malnutrition - (Origin: UNICEF)

B. The Broader Development Context: The Dynamics of Socio-economic Change

The design of IFAD-supported investment projects is being undertaken in changing economic and social systems. There is no easy formula of development for and by the poor. Nor is there any common prescription for addressing nutrition as part of the efforts to alleviate poverty.

The notion of ‘food systems’ and their changing features within dynamic development processes is gaining ground as a useful overall framework. Food systems comprise all the factors and processes that determine the availability, flow and use of food in a society, and that affect household food security conditions and dietary patterns over time. The Fund has recently drawn attention to the potential of using a food systems focus in the study of changing trends in access to food and dietary patterns¹. IFAD recognizes in particular the opportunities offered by this approach for treating dietary issues in the wider context and not confining them to so-called ‘nutrition interventions’. The notion of ‘diet’², as different from single foods is a critical concept: it integrates ecological, economic, social, cultural and nutritional requirements and determinants for proper food ingestion, a prerequisite for proper nutritional status.

Changing dietary patterns

Nutritionists now agree that traditional diets in most subsistence economies have been reasonably adequate, reflecting that sufficient and stable supplies of diverse foods have been available to the household. This is not to say that poor people have not suffered periods of seasonal, recurrent or occasional food hardships. However, they have usually had strategies to help them return to normal. In the case of young children, feeding practices may not always have been fully adequate, but this has been more the result of habits and customs than of scarcity of household food resources per se.

Research in recent years has pointed to the effects of rapid economic change on the viability of many traditional dietary patterns. This is particularly true where a good part of the household food base historically came from subsistence production, including the gathering of wild foods. While only specific studies can reveal the real situation, one can generally say that with the shifting of part of agriculture from subsistence to cash income, the form of food procurement has also shifted, in whole or in part, to purchasing. Thus obtaining cash income becomes vital to the acquisition of food.

Whether or not this shift is beneficial in dietary terms will depend on (i) the capacity of the market to provide a food base equal to or better than the one it is replacing, and (ii) on the households’ allocation of income to food within the total consumption basket. There are at least two concerns here: First, the cash income may not be sufficient for maintaining the same dietary diversity (and therefore nutritional completeness) as the old subsistence food supply. Depending on prevailing price policies, it is possible that purchase of the staple food alone draws so much from the household budget that there is little left for the supplementary food products that are also essential for a wholesome diet. This cash income will also have to be shared between food and other consumer needs and wants that are becoming accessible through the market.

Second, with access to cash comes access to new products. These may be perceived as of higher value and status than the familiar and established ones. Also, traditional food patterns and eating habits have certain built-in ‘codes’ for choice, procurement, management and consumption of foods across seasons. Rapid exposure and access to new opportunities without a corresponding availability of new codes leaves people without guidance as to what to choose, and how to distinguish between the ‘good’ and ‘less good’ when money is scarce. Dietary confusion results, and there is risk of a critical imbalance in the household food supply and eating patterns.³

There is less ground for concern where a good part of the food base comes from home production than there is where there is a potential for overt changes in the diet. One example of such changes could be an abrupt transition to mono-cropping systems in areas where market links are ineffective. Possible adverse effects to the indigenous food base must therefore be monitored. Increasing interest in the traditional food base in recent years has been reinforced by the risk of degradation of plant genetic material. The sustainability of indigenous production systems is vital to the viability of the local food base until that food base has been safely replaced by appropriate alternatives.

While these considerations are basic to an understanding of evolving nutritional changes in the wake of planned and unplanned economic and social development processes, it is impossible to generalize and predict a priori the effect of a rapid changeover to cash economies on food supplies, dietary composition and food intake. The picture will vary. A number of factors determining the nature and management of extra cash in a household can be determined with precision only through focused investigations.

The Fund is pursuing the search for appropriate analytical concepts and tools for applying the household food security (HFS) concept in project design and monitoring and evaluation. Field research and development work have evidenced the characteristics of the trends described above. Appropriate frameworks and tools will facilitate the interpretation of these trends in relation to the promotion of HFS. The development of such tools, however, must be consistent with a clear understanding of the broader issues involved.

Refining and Expanding the Tools of Analysis

Incorporating a food-systems perspective in HFS analysis brings out issues for which adequate tools have not been created in systematic study and field trials. Three models are proposed:

• The Normative Dimensions of Household Food Security, which defines household food security in ideal terms (Box 2);⁴
• A Tool for Household Food Security Analysis, which identifies the conditions necessary for achieving or maintaining HFS (Box 3); and
• A Model of Nutrition Security, which depicts the interrelationships among the household resource base, intrahousehold resource control and management, and the resulting condition of nutrition security (NS) for the individual household member from which his/her nutritional status is ultimately determined (Box 4).

Household food security – Its normative dimensions

As conceived by IFAD, household food security denotes the state in which a household has continuous access to food supplies that can fully satisfy the nutritional and dietary needs of all its members. Such a situation would imply that a household has the capacity to procure adequate food supplies on a stable basis and in a sustainable manner. Thus, a state of HFS satisfies three essential conditions: a capacity to procure adequate food supplies, and the stability and sustainability of those supplies (Box 2).

Capacity to procure adequate food supplies. This means, first, the ability of a household to procure, through production, income and/or transfers, an assortment of foods that is adequate in quantity and quality for composing diets that meet the nutritional needs of its members. The food supply needs to provide the energy and nutrients required for a healthy and productive life for each individual. Second, adequacy has a cultural dimension. Food being an integral part of a society’s culture, the food has to be of a type that is culturally acceptable and satisfying. Third, food has to be safe from toxic or other harmful substances that can threaten the health of the consumer. Developments in nutritional, anthropological and food sciences will guide the notion of adequacy, with local interpretations especially of the cultural dimensions. Attention must be given to perceptions and experiences regarding food adequacy within traditional medical systems (e.g., the Ayurvedic).

The systematic observation of these dimensions of food adequacy is essential for matching assessments of food procurement with real needs in dietary/nutritional terms. This is often the weakest point in activities to promote food security.

Box 2: The Normative Dimensions of Household Food Security

Stability of household food supplies. This refers to the ability of a household to procure (see footnote in Box 2) food supplies on a continuing basis, including when faced with stress, shocks or crises such as crop failure, market fluctuations and decline or loss of employment. Second, it denotes the ability to stabilize food supplies where income and production are seasonal. Stability implies that a household is able to minimize the extent and duration of food deficits in a dynamic way. The test of stability is resilience: an ability to bounce back and quickly regain an adequate food supply in case of a shortfall. Such resilience implies the existence of buffer mechanisms to absorb the effects of short-term production or income. Households lacking access to buffer mechanisms of some kind tend to be fragile and highly vulnerable to food-supply deficits.

Sustainability of household food supplies. This refers to the capacity to ensure the long-term stability of the household food supply. Sustainability has many dimensions and requires that the means of food procurement meet a multiple set of conditions. The more important among these are:

• Sustainable production systems: Where households depend on natural resources for their income and food (i.e., agriculture, fishing and forest products), production practices should not conflict with or damage the environment so that future production is undermined. Environmental degradation is often closely linked with the perpetuation of poverty and food insecurity. Sustainable management of natural resources is a basic requirement for household food security, and entails continual adjustments to changing environmental, social and economic conditions.
• Protection of future productivity: If food procurement methods involve disposal of productive assets (e.g., land, production equipment and draught animals) households suffer a loss of their future production capacity. Current food consumption is then achieved at the cost of future consumption. Hence, sustainability requires that the manner in which food is procured does not lead to a loss in productive capacity of the household.
• Self-reliance: Food should be procured through self-reliant means, i.e., depending on one’s own efforts and resources, self-help, exchange or market processes rather than on charity, aid, philanthropy or the benevolence of others. Dependency is unsustainable; it also conflicts with human dignity and self-respect.
• Overall livelihood needs: Efforts by households to achieve food security take place within a wider overall livelihood framework of limited resources and competing needs and priorities. An adequate and stable food supply should be achieved without compromising other basic needs considered important by households, such as education, health, drinking water and housing. There is the danger that a household that must spend a lot of its resources to obtain adequate food may find that its efforts to achieve food security conflict with the satisfaction of other basic needs, hence making those efforts unsustainable. This factor highlights the critical importance of enhancing the real incomes of households for their being able to meet total livelihood needs.

Household food security thus defined has many attractions for project planners. It has a household focus, it entails a quantifiable food basket and it is a pre-condition for proper nutrition among household members. It can bring to bear on projects many development considerations, such as nutrition, environment, culture and gender, participation and self-reliance. The HFS framework brings out all this together in a ‘normative’, or idealized, way.

A tool for household food security analysis

Taking account of the household’s total food needs, the link between its resources and their allocation for the continuous satisfaction of these needs can be expressed in terms of conditions promoting household food security. IFAD is developing a model to depict these linkages (Box 3). Still in a state of evolution, the model applies to household food security the same analytical process as followed in the UNICEF conceptual framework of the causes of malnutrition. The model incorporates the HFS elements and relates them to different conditioning factors and processes by depicting these at different levels of cause and effect. It identifies the conditions of the household food supply – its adequacy, stability and sustainability – as the sign of the HFS situation. The state of the food supply in a household would be defined by its characteristics, i.e., by the diversity of food types in the household food resource base and the annual and multi-annual patterns of supply availability.

Such information permits assessment of the nutritional adequacy of the food supply, the identification of specific deficits and their timing within the year, as well as supply trends over longer periods. The extent of the food supply problems and those household types most vulnerable to food insecurity can be identified through the aggregation of information from many households. The stepwise interpretation and use of the analytical model would be as follows:

In the model, access to an adequate food base and effectiveness of food handling are considered the immediate conditioning factors of the state of the household food supply. A ‘food base’ would be the foods available from different sources in a given area and the problems households confront in procuring food from each of these sources. ‘Food handling’ would cover storage, conservation and processing, or any other mechanism for increasing the life of the food products and their safety. Alone or combined, these two factors can enhance or constrain the composition of the food supply and a household’s prolonged access to that supply.

The model identifies three general and closely linked underlying conditioning factors, or clusters of factors: the stable access to needed resources, their management and the patterns of social support. The interaction of these factors would constitute a household’s procurement strategies. In effect, this level describes how a household performs in procuring food supplies.

The first factor, stable access to resources, relates to the availability of the environmental, human, material and social resources that, in one way or another, can influence food supply, and the possibility of obtaining and benefiting from these resources. Such resources could be cash, labour, markets, water, land or tools. Access to public services, such as credit schemes, extension and educational and health services, would be included here.

The second factor, management of resources, refers to the way people exploit or dispose of the resources to which they have access. Household expenditure patterns, how resources are used for on-farm and off-farm production and the use of forest areas and their flora and fauna are all relevant factors here. Environmental considerations are particularly important in this context. Resources are managed in such a way as to ensure stable food access in the face of changing environmental and socio-economic conditions.

Box 3: Factors Conditioning Household Food Security

The third factor, social support patterns, includes the interpersonal relationships within and outside the household that facilitate access to resources and influence the forms of resource management. These are patterns of mutual help, solidarity and complementarity of individual and collective action. They also include patterns of external support from government institutions and NGOs. Beneficial social support patterns are crucial for successful household food-related strategies.

The food supply situation will be regulated by the structures and mechanisms for control and management of resources. It is the set of rules and norms, internal and external to the household, and the way they are applied that govern a household’s decision-making and action. To understand the elements at this level in the context of household food security, attention must be paid to the production systems adopted by the household, the domestic power structures and the systems of values and interpersonal relations. The socio-economic structure of a given society will have a strong bearing on the characteristics of these factors.

It is thus essential to understand who makes the decisions, which decisions are made, why they are made and in what manner. The important factors determining the process of allocation and distribution of resources (what and for whom) are who controls the resources within the household, who decides on what and for whom, and what criteria and priorities are used in this decision-making. Gender, social pressures, awareness and consciousness are clearly important factors influencing this process.

Ultimately, the household food supply situation is the reflection of the local agro-ecological conditions and the existing marketing systems. Together these determine the potential resource base and mould the particular food systems.

Defining location-specific elements of HFS. Defining with precision the elements of household food security in terms of the ideal or desirable in a specific socio-economic, ecological and cultural context, and the specific conditions necessary to maintain or proceed towards this desirable state (which is to have HFS), can in practice be done through a range of alternative and, in part, complementary activities.

Field activities to promote analysis of HFS conditions can take place at the community, district or higher levels. The purpose and nature of the project or programme would dictate the choice and sequence of different activities and at what level they would take place. Basically, there are three major contexts in which household food security conditions can be analysed and promoted:

• Data gathering in the form of externally conducted food security surveys based on common survey methods. These can be designed on the basis of the normative framework and analytical tool presented for household food security as the core concern, but collecting at the same time national and regional data for the most comprehensive picture of food security problems and opportunities in the country. In field projects, initial data gathered in this way can be useful for triggering activities of a more participatory nature.
• Area-level participatory workshops with managers of projects and related district representative of line ministries, national statistical bureau and professional institutions and NGOs. This allows participants to identify problems, their causes as seen from the local perspective, and indicators for assessment and monitoring. It can lead to local plans for the sharing of responsibility in decentralized collection of the appropriate data. Such workshops can be used both for evaluation and planning purposes, and the HFS analytical tool can help direct the process.
• Community-level workshops in selected project areas adapted to the existing framework of local planning. These aim at generating a process of reflection by the community members on their perception of household food security, the significance of food insecurity for their resource allocation, and how they perceive the causes and remedies for household food insecurity. Such exercises must be conducted by trained animators and guided by the comprehensive understanding of household food security conditions and their interrelations. Again, the HFS analytical tool can give direction to these activities.

IFAD will further test the analytical model in the context of such activities and invite other interested parties to put it to trial and refinement.⁵

Nutrition security

How does all this relate to human nutritional status as expressed in biological/physiological terms? IFAD’s efforts in pursuing its nutrition-related objectives are ultimately directed towards contributing to ‘improvement of nutritional levels’ as stated in the Fund’s mandate. In the nineties this objective could be translated as the endeavour toward nutrition security, the condition that combines having access to adequate food, being well cared for and enjoying a healthy environment. Good nutritional status is the biological manifestation of nutrition security.

A complex set of processes operating at the level of the household unit, within it and at the level of its individual members influence nutrition security. Household food security is one prerequisite for nutrition security. Within the limits of the household resource base, it is the decisions made within the household on the allocation of its resources that ‘filter’ these resources into their ultimate destination and finally ascertain the nutrition security of the individual members.

The transition from HFS to nutrition security is therefore not a straightforward one. The model depicted in Box 4 shows that the attainment of nutrition security requires the satisfaction of certain conditions at each of these levels.

Box 4: Nutrition security

---

1/ Food systems in economic transition and their significance for change in dietary patterns was the underlying theme of a subregional workshop jointly organized by IFAD and UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia in Kathmandu, Nepal, February 1992.

2/ In some usages of the term, diet connotes food prescribed therapeutically during illness. It is used here with the generic meaning of combinations of foods prepared to become daily meals for human beings.

3/ Such effects on dietary choices, in combination with social pressure on limited budgets for expenditures other than on food, has in some countries led to what has been called the 'second generation of nutrition problems'. This point was especially highlighted in the final report of the IFAD Nutrition Programming Mission to the Second Badulla Integrated Rural Development Project in Sri Lanka (June 1992).

4/ The model used here was adapted from Eide, W.B., Rolmboe-Ottesen, G., Oshaug, A., Perera, D., Tilakaratna, S. and Wandel, M.: Introducing Nutritional Considerations into Rural development Programs with Focus on Agriculture. L A Theoretical Contribution (1985); II. Towards Practice (1986). Institute for Nutrition Research, University of Oslo.

5/ A more detailed outline of possible HFS issues for project focus is provided in an appendix.