Jump to... Introduction Food security Market orientation Project intervention Women's work burden Conclusions Tables Technical appendix References

Several food security indicators have been used in this study: (a) a household’s access to cereals over a year (measured by the number of months in which a household can feed its members adequately) at the time of the survey and five years before the survey, (b) the change in a household’s food consumption (cereal and non-cereal) in the preceding five years, (c) a household’s ability to cope with lean seasons within a year, and (d) its ability to cope with major food crises.⁸ In terms of the conceptual framework discussed earlier, the first two indicators measure the level of food acquirement and changes therein, while the last two refer to shocks to acquirement.

Table 1 provides information on cereal consumption for the combined sample of all three survey areas. Households are categorized by the number of months in which, according to the perception of the households members themselves, the households have been able to feed their members well. As can be seen from the table, at the time of the survey one in ten households was in dire circumstances, being unable to consume enough cereals for more than three months in a year. About one third had enough cereals for three to six months, and one fourth for six to nine months. The remaining one third was relatively well off, being able to consume enough cereals for nine months to one year.

Compared with the situation prevailing five years previously, one can observe a distinct tendency towards a leveling-off of the distribution of cereal consumption in that there was a decline in the proportion of households at the two extremes and a corresponding increase in the middle. Thus, the proportion of households that were the most food insecure, that is, those unable for more than three months to consume sufficient cereals, was exactly halved over the five-year period, from one in five to one in ten. There was also a modest reduction in the number of households that were the most food secure, that is, those households able for more than nine months to consume enough cereals. By contrast, the proportion of households in the middle categories – those able to consume enough cereals for three to nine months – increased from 44% to 58%.

On the whole, the level of food security changed for the better during the five-year period. This can be seen from Table 2, which indicates that cereal consumption increased for nearly half the households and declined for about one third. The improvement was even better in terms of overall food consumption, which includes cereals and non-cereals. Just over 50% of the households reported an increase in food consumption, while only one fourth reported a decline.

While the level of food consumption improved overall, the ability of households to cope with fluctuations in food availability also improved in the five years preceding the survey. As can be seen from Table 3, over 60% of the households reported that they were more capable of coping during lean seasons than they had been five years previously, while only half as many, that is, 30%, reported they were less able to do so. The ability to cope with major food crises also improved.

Thus, in terms of the level of acquirement and the ability to withstand shocks in the combined sample of the three regions, improvement in food security was more common than either deterioration, or no change.

However, there are some interesting regional variations in this regard (Table 4). At the time of the survey, the food security situation – in terms of adequacy of cereal consumption – was the most favourable in Nepal. While nearly three quarters of the households in the Nepal project area claimed to have enough cereal for six months or more, only about one half did so in the project areas of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

However, in terms of improvement in food security over the five years preceding the survey, households in the Tamil Nadu project area did the best by far. The proportion of the households that were most food insecure, that is, those consuming enough cereal only during less than three months of the year, declined sharply in this region, from 32% to only 9%. The proportion also declined in Nepal, but less sharply, while in Andhra Pradesh it remained the same. At the other end of the spectrum, the number of the households that were most food secure, that is, those consuming sufficient cereal during more than nine months, increased in Tamil Nadu only, while it declined in the other two regions. Thus, the households in Tamil Nadu enjoyed the strongest improvement in food security at both ends of the spectrum.

This is confirmed in Table 5, which shows how the consumption of cereal, together with the overall consumption of food, changed in the five years preceding the survey. Nearly two thirds of the households in the Tamil Nadu area reported improvement in the consumption of cereals and all foods, while only one quarter reported a decline. In Nepal, too, improvement was more common. But the situation was more precarious in Andhra Pradesh, where cereal consumption actually decreased. While there was some improvement in terms of overall food consumption, it was quite slender in comparison with that in the project areas of Tamil Nadu and Nepal.

The precarious situation of the Andhra Pradesh households is also evident with regard to the ability to cope with fluctuations in aggregate food supply. As Table 6 shows, many households in this area reported a decline in their ability to cope with fluctuations. This is in stark contrast with the situation prevailing in the Tamil Nadu and Nepal project areas, where a vast majority – nearly 70% – reported an improvement in their ability to cope with fluctuations.

In sum, over the five years preceding the survey, the overall food security situation improved for the combined sample of households in terms of the level of acquirement and the ability to cope with shocks. However, food security did deteriorate for a sizeable proportion of households: between 20% and 30% reported a deterioration in terms of either the level of acquirement or the ability to cope with shocks. The deterioration was most evident in Andhra Pradesh, but even in Tamil Nadu, where the improvement was the most impressive, nearly one quarter of the households reported a worsening in food security.⁹

It is useful to ask about the characteristics that distinguish those households in which food security deteriorated from those in which food security improved, or, more generally, about the nature of those forces that contributed to improvement in food security and those that led to deterioration. The next two sections consider some of the potential forces related to the market orientation of livelihoods and to project interventions, respectively.

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8/ As perceived and reported by the respondents themselves.

9/ In view of the fact that the survey was not based on a statistically representative sample, these findings should not be interpreted either as reflecting the overall situation in the project areas or as indicating the relative efficacy of the three projects in improving household food security.