Jump to... Executive summary Introduction Objectives Food insecurity Survey methodology Role of women Household vulnerability Agenda Appenidx

From a methodological standpoint, the study demonstrates how even very simple indicators, such as the number of sources of income, can be useful for targeting purposes and for prioritizing HFS interventions. The data at hand revealed that a strikingly large number of households, particularly in Suchiquer and Tituque, derive their income from one source only. This finding indicates a potential entry point for projects concerned with stabilizing the access of poor households to food. However, to limit attention to these factors alone can be misleading. In general, no single determinant of HFS is sufficient to guarantee food adequacy. Its contribution to food security must be evaluated in relation to other interrelated variables and to the specific socio-economic context. To this end, composite indicators can add substantially to the specificity and accuracy of analyses geared towards the identification of archetypes of households, based on their vulnerability to food insecurity.

Although comparison with some benchmark indicator of food and nutrition security – such as anthropometric measures – would add to the validation process, the composite indicator proposed in this study appears to perform well in locating the most food insecure households. Our analysis of the single determinants of HFS indicated that a large percentage of households in Suchiquer have many of the characteristics associated with moderate to extreme vulnerability to food insecurity, i.e., low food supply associated with low productivity, relatively high dependency on food markets, low income and crop diversification, a high degree of temporary migration and low asset stocks. These single features are successfully captured in the composite indicator, suggesting that, based on our assumptions, a striking 60% of households in Suchiquer demonstrate extremely high levels of vulnerability to food insecurity. Based on this preliminary analysis, it seems feasible to use this or other similarly fashioned indicators for geographical targeting and vulnerability mapping.

The complex nature of the HFS concept, and the extreme heterogeneity of the local conditions in which it is applied, can create ambiguity with respect to the specific instrumentality to be adopted. Projects concerned with reducing local vulnerability to food inadequacy face several options: they could focus on increasing food supply, either by enhancing food crop productivity or by emphasizing income enhancements to improve food access. Alternatively, projects could focus on improving the security of household coping strategies by promoting risk management and insurance mechanisms against food entitlement failures. Our findings suggest that neither approach can be considered the best one at all times. Instead, strategies must be location specific, and must distil several instrumentalities that reflect community and household idiosyncrasies.

The main thrust of both projects is towards improving access by poor rural households to credit and extension services. These efforts are focused on income enhancement, and thus indirectly on household food adequacy. The data show that the projects have been instrumental in improving credit access, especially for women, in all the surveyed communities. However, it is important to evaluate credit programmes not only in terms of delivery and default, but also with respect to the results achieved in promoting food security. Credit access must be seen as an (indirect) instrumentality through which to promote HFS, and not as an objective in itself.

In particular, close attention must be paid to the fact that credit programmes geared towards income enhancement can also increase the vulnerability of poor households, particularly when this credit is misused or involves riskier ventures. In the case of women, for example, it is not unusual to see a loan turn into a liability, if the woman is left with the full responsibility of repaying the debt although she has either lost control of (part of) the borrowed capital to her husband or is unable to generate sufficient income to pay it back. Projects must keep an eye on how a loan is used, and on the possibility of trade-offs between the improved income-generation potential and the increased risk associated with acquiring the loan.

While credit programmes appeared to be related to livestock accumulation in some communities, and to agricultural technology adoption and commercialization in others, these programmes did not prove equally effective in supporting agricultural and income diversification, in spite of the relevance of the activities to HFS. In Suchiquer and Tituque, in particular, a surprisingly high number of households derive their income from one source only, even among the beneficiaries. This pattern creates an exponential increase in the risk of entitlement failure for the affected households. Furthermore, the data reveal strikingly low levels of agricultural diversification across the communities surveyed. Project participation can be given credit for small improvements, although only in some of the communities and for a limited number of households. Crop diversification is extremely important to HFS, since it is often associated with increases in food supplies, improvements in the household diet, income gains and a lowered risk of entitlement failure.

Cash crops, such as broccoli and cauliflower, appear to produce positive effects on income. However, the heavy reliance of many households on these crops as the main source of income could be a matter of concern from a food security perspective. The data show that households growing cash crops in the NTX communities derive over 70% of their income from on-farm labour (mainly broccoli production), compared with less than 10% for the remaining households in these communities. The majority of these households are also project beneficiaries. Although it is still too early to report on the surveyed communities, past experience in Guatemala has shown that excessive concentration of household resources on these crops may be extremely risky, particularly for poorly endowed farmers. An increase in agronomic problems related to pest build-up and deteriorating market conditions make these commodities extremely hazardous for poor households in the long run.

The promotion of handicraft manufacturing is, conceptually speaking, a viable alternative for many low-income households with little agricultural potential. However, the limited demand and the highly underdeveloped marketing channels for these commodities, combined with increases in input costs, make handicraft manufacturing a low-return activity for many households in the surveyed communities. Women in Suchiquer reported earning as little as Q 1 per week from handicrafts. The information also indicates that, to date, the project has had little impact on improving the incomes of beneficiary women through this activity – apparently because of bottlenecks in marketing.

The analysis has shown that the projects have generally been successful in promoting an improved role for women in terms of control over household resources and participation in decision-making. These results have been achieved by focusing on both economic and social leverage points. Conceptually, the promotion of income-generating activities for women is likely to be a viable intervention, provided that: (i) women retain control over earned income, and (ii) project measures do not add excessively to women’s workloads. Regarding the latter, it is unlikely that women will be released from time-intensive domestic chores in order to pursue their involvement in market activities. This fact appears to be supported by the findings of this report. As a result, women end up with an excessively heavy work burden or, as a last resort, neglect home activities.

Finally, because of their very nature, productive credit programmes are likely to miss the poorest of the poor as a result of the lack of collateral and higher risk aversion of this group. Hence, there appears to be a conceptual conflict between IFAD’s mandate "to target the most vulnerable" and the actual implementation of its credit programmes. This is particularly true with regard to more sizeable loans, for which some form of collateral is required.

Based on these conclusions, the following recommendations are put forward:

i) The heterogeneity observed between and within communities with respect to HFS calls for customized instrumentalities and improved targeting. The promotion of direct food-related measures may be necessary, in some instances, in order that food-related projects meet the nutrition security objectives of different groups of the population.

Types of direct instrumentalities, such as technical assistance to women and the promotion of family vegetable gardens through micro-irrigation systems, can contribute substantially to the household agricultural diversification strategy and reduce the risk of food entitlement failure on the part of the most vulnerable households. Furthermore, vegetable gardens represent a viable instrument for coping with food insecurity because of the relatively short cycle of the crops in question, and thus help improve household resilience in the event of food entitlement failure. Limited access to the capital required to cover the initial fixed costs (e.g., irrigation) is often a constraining factor for poor households – and for women in particular – wishing to get involved in this type of activity. However, from a purely economic standpoint, a loan used by a poor household to plant a vegetable garden is more likely to be defaulted on, since it will not generate sufficient cash if the crops grown are used exclusively to meet the household’s food requirements. Since these projects place greater emphasis on income generation than on food security, direct instrumentalities for improving food security, such as the planting of vegetable gardens, are unlikely to become priorities under present arrangements, in spite of the considerable interest shown by many of the project staff and many households in the surveyed communities.

Another reason for food-related projects to favour direct instrumentalities whenever feasible is that they can be targeted more precisely towards helping the neediest. Indirect instrumentalities to improve HFS, such as credit and technical assistance geared towards productive (riskier) investments, are less likely to benefit the poorest of the poor, because these households typically lack the necessary collateral or are highly risk averse. Issues such as these tend to keep the most vulnerable households beyond the reach of projects that promote productive investments. Projects with HFS-relevant elements ought to take into consideration the fact that many of their indirect instruments are likely to miss many impoverished and food-insecure households.

The creation of special funds to assist these most vulnerable groups can be an option for productive projects that have claims over food and nutrition security.²² For example, family vegetable gardens for the most food insecure could be supported under these special funds. Alternatively, projects could pursue solid collaboration with other specialized agencies and NGOs, in order to target those households in particular need, whenever limitation of resources or boundaries in the specific mandate call for such intervention.

ii) Risk considerations must be an integral part of the assessment of HFS. Consequently, food-related projects must emphasize instrumentalities geared towards reducing risk and providing insurance against food entitlement failure, while also promoting food access.

One of the main objectives of the analysis was to demonstrate the danger of risk and the importance of insurance against food entitlement failure in the assessment of household vulnerability to food insecurity. The composite indicator hinted at the fact that the projects may have been instrumental in reducing household vulnerability to food shortages in almost all communities. However, the effect is often the result exclusively of improvements in a household’s food access via income enhancement. In spite of remarkable project efforts, a large number of households in all communities still indicate high levels of vulnerability to the risk of food entitlement failure, resulting from poorly diversified coping strategies. The proper choice of alternative income sources represents an entry point for IFAD projects to enhance the food security of the most vulnerable households.

In order to reduce the risk of food entitlement failure among poor households, the project could also take a more active role in promoting risk management schemes, particularly when riskier ventures are being introduced as part of project activities. The analysis has shown that non-traditional crops can be extremely profitable. However, because of extremely variable prices on the international markets, returns for these crops are highly uncertain. The promotion of risk management schemes that complement the adoption of riskier NTXs would increase the adoption rates of the poorest households and improve targeting. Because of these higher risks, there is a possibility that the impact of the project’s credit programme to stimulate NTX production may be concentrated on a few better-endowed households only. Lack of dependable forms of crop insurance is often the reason for poor farmers’ underinvesting in profitable but risky ventures. Thus, the coordination of unorthodox crop insurance schemes provides another entry point for projects that attempt to improve the incomes of poor households through the adoption of cash crops. In order successfully to promote the production of cash crops among poor farmers, while reducing the risk of entitlement failure caused by market uncertainty, projects could support the creation of guaranteed price schemes for cash crops within farmer groups. With such a system, a self-financed fund would be created to compensate farmers in the case of crop failure or depressed market prices. These funds would come from taking a percentage of the sale price whenever it exceeded a certain level.²³

Finally, the projects ought to play a pivotal role in the diffusion of information at the regional level. For example, the experience in Central America with regard to non-traditional crops in the past two decades should be an important lesson and source of information for farmers venturing into these types of cultivation. The project could play a catalytic role in the diffusion of this learning. Such exchange of knowledge would contribute to reducing the risks associated with NTX production.

iii) Projects ought to promote instrumentalities that enable poor households to capture more of the value-added they generate.

Poor households involved in market activities should be put in a position to be able to capture a larger share of the value-added for the commodities they produce. This applies to handicrafts, cash crops and any other type of market production supported by the projects. The success of promoting income-generating activities to ensure HFS and poverty reduction is conditional on the fact that the targeted groups maintain control over a fair share of the resources thus generated. This applies at both household and intrahousehold levels. At the household level, reported evidence suggests that NTX farmers in the surveyed communities may not be capturing their rightful share of NTX profits because of the disproportionate relationship with powerful agro-exporters. On the other hand, carrot and lima bean producers in San Martín appear to have access to higher profits. The difference often boils down to the farmers’ ability to market directly their own products. At the intrahousehold level, the data illustrate that assisting women in marketing their products may be as important as providing credit support for production, so that women are able to retain control over the resources they generate. As seen in the case of Suchiquer, when women are unable to market their own handicrafts directly they tend to lose control over a large share of the economic rewards for their work – in spite of their being the primary beneficiaries of the loan. In view of these tenets, projects ought to persist in their income-generation efforts through: (i) the coordination of group purchasing of inputs; (ii) a vigorous commitment to the development of alternative marketing channels; (iii) firm support, within the communities, to the production of the inputs required for handicraft manufacturing; and (iv) the creation of producer associations that would take charge of the marketing process, either fully or in part.

iv) Projects must persevere in their efforts to integrate women into income-generating activities. However, they should also be aware of the potential externalities on food and nutrition security caused by the reallocation of intrahousehold resources, following women’s involvement in market activities.

Because of women’s role in reproductive activities, and until the traditional practices that put women in charge of household duties are modified or removed, projects should consider prioritizing those market activities that present greater synergies with home production, in order to assist women in particular. Activities falling into this category are handicraft manufacturing, the running of small stores and businesses and the cultivation of family vegetable patches. On the other hand, animal husbandry, because of its time-intensity, may, in the long run, create negative externalities from a nutritional standpoint for women and for the most vulnerable members of the household. Although it is still too early to assess the impact of women’s involvement in sheep husbandry on the quality of home production and intrahousehold health, projects should keep an eye on possible future manifestations.

v) Projects must give priority to activities with greater synergies

Project activities in the communities of Buena Vista and San Martín appear to be good examples of an integrated development strategy displaying extensive backward and forward linkages. Through the allocation of loans and technical assistance, the project has successfully increased small animal stocks among households in the region. These animals now represent the backbone of the regional production system and provide synergistic links to related types of production in the area. Furthermore, these efforts have stimulated women’s involvement in market activities and decision-making, in line with the project’s gender focus.

vi) Projects must be catalysts in the promotion of instruments that enhance nutrition security, through collaboration with other specialized agencies.

Whenever the specific nutrition-related intervention is beyond the explicit objectives of the IFAD project, the project must pursue its efforts to assist the most impoverished households by seeking collaboration with specialized institutions operating in the region. For example, the data indicate that a relatively food secure community such as San Nicolas can also be characterized by strikingly poor sanitary conditions and habits. If projects wish to maximize their income-enhancing efforts, they should simultaneously promote a sound environment from a nutrition security standpoint. Furthermore, simple and inexpensive instrumentalities such as nutrition education to introduce non-traditional cash crops among the traditional items in the household diet can considerably mitigate one of the potential negative effects of NTX adoption – namely, an increased dependency on food purchase.

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22/ An example of these special funds was encountered in San Nicolas. Similar types of complementary programmes are currently contemplated in the Cuchumatanes project.

23/ Similar price schemes are currently being implemented by several agricultural cooperatives and farmer groups in many countries, including Guatemala, with satisfactory results.