Household Food & Livelihood Security

World Food Programme

Southern Africa Regional Office

Vulnerability Analysis

Concepts, Indicators & Measurements

A VAM/Programme Training Document

March 1999

Maputo/ Mozambique

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General Background and introduction

1. Content of the Session

This session covers key issues of food security and vulnerability analysis. The topics are organised as follows:

• Key conceptual issues of food security and vulnerability analysis;
• Introductory note to Food Systems (food economies);
• Coping strategies, relevance and measurement;
• Vulnerability indicators/ measurements;
• Targeting the vulnerable group/ areas
• Needs Assessment

2. Workshop Objectives

• Help participants to revisit concepts and measurement of vulnerability analysis in context of WFP/ partners’ priorities;

• Identify/ discuss the relevance the food system /food economies for specific operational areas;

• Describe coping strategies of population under stress conditions;
• Revisit key aspects of food security indicators and methods of measurement for targeting, monitoring and evaluation;
• Introduce criteria for targeting beneficiaries for WFP interventions;
• Introduce methods and instruments for needs assessment under different conditions;

SESSION ONE

Livelihood Security and Vulnerability: Concept and Measurement Issues

Key Questions

• What are Food Security, nutritional security and livelihood security?

• Why is Food Security and vulnerability analysis so important for welfare institutions?

• What makes Food Security (FS) different from development interventions?

Over head - nutritional security model: Box 1 The Causes of Malnutrition

Definitions of Food Security

For the purpose of this training we will review three definitions.

1. World Bank definition of Food Security (1986).

Food Security is defined as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life". Food Insecurity is defined as " lack of access to enough food".

1. Chamber's definition of Sustainable Livelihood Security (1988).

Livelihood is defined as adequate stocks and flows of food and cash to meet basic needs. Security refers to secure ownership of, or access to, resources and income earning activities, including reserves and assets to offset risks, ease shocks and meet contingencies. Sustainable refers to the maintenance or enhancement of resource productivity on a long-term basis.

3.World Food Summit (1996) Rome

“Food security is defined as a situation in which all households have both physical and economic access to adequate food for all members, and where households are not at risk of losing such access. There are three dimensions implicit in this definition: availability, stability and access.

Adequate food availability means that, on average, sufficient food supplies should be available to meet consumption needs.

Stability refers to minimising the probability that, in difficult years or seasons, food consumption might fall below consumption requirements. In addition, if food needs are met through exploitation of non-renewable natural resources or degradation of the environment, there is no guarantee of food security in the long-term.”

Access draws attention to the fact that, even with bountiful supplies, many people still go hungry because they do not have the resources to produce or purchase the food they need. Ultimately, food security concerns the individual or family unit, and its principal determinant is purchasing power, income adjusted for the cost of what that income can buy.

1. Sufficiency - what is "enough"?

There are various approaches to defining notional perception of "enough". These include:

Minimal level of food consumption.

The basic food needed.

Adequate to meet nutritional needs.

Enough food for life, health and growth of the young and for productive effort. The definitions of "enough" food should be seen in context of the following:

• Unit of analysis should be defined.

• Resident population (households);
• Refugees (camp population);
• individuals (considering age, gender)

• Malnutrition rate:

Calculate what proportion of people fall below the norm (2200 kcal per person per day), and by how much they fall below the norm?

• Examples of vulnerability threshold used in Southern Africa

• Mozambique: 1700 kcal/per capita (plus other unknown);
• Zambia:
• Malawi
• Zimbabwe
• Lesotho

(2).Access & Entitlement

• This core concept refers to ability to acquire sufficient food through and from:

• what one owns,
• what one produces,
• what one can trade, and
• what one inherits or are given.

• The scale of food security measurement:

• Macro phenomena - national, regional issues.

• Micro phenomena - as a human problem. For example:

• the urban poor,
• small or marginal farmers and rural landless;
• gender disaggregation;

(3).Security - Secure Access to enough food

Security and vulnerability are key concepts.

Security builds on:

•the idea of vulnerability to entitlement failure;

•focusing more clearly on risk.

Vulnerability/risk analysis consists of -

•Acute food shortages due to widespread crop failure, natural or other disasters, fluctuations in prices.

•National food supply & balance of payments.

•Welfare vulnerability

•Ability of household food systems to resist crises threatening to lower the achieved level of food consumption.

•Risks in employment & wages.

•Risks in health & morbidity.

•Risks in conflict.

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© Getachew Diriba, 1999

Sources of risks to household food insecurity

Sources of Entitlement / Types of Risks
Natural / State / Markets / Community / Others
Productive capital (land, machinery, tools, animals, farm buildings, trees, wells, etc. / Drought, contamination (e.g. water), land degradation, fire, flooding, cyclone, / Land or other asset redistribution/ confiscation / Changes on costs of maintenance / Appropriation and loss of access to common property resources / Loss of land as a result of conflict
Non-productive capital (jewellery, dwelling, granaries, some animals, cash savings) / Pests, animal disease / Compulsory procurement, villagisation, wealth tax, / Price shocks (falls in value of jewellery and livestock, rapid inflation / Breakdown if sharing mechanisms (communal grazing, communal irrigation, etc.) / Loss of assets as a result of war, theft,
Hunan capital (labour power, education, health / Disease epidemics (e.g. AIDS), morbidity, disability / Declining public health expenditure and/or introduction of user charges, restrictions on labour migration / Unemployment, falling wage rates and real wages / Forced labour, conscription, mobility restriction, destruction of schools and clinics during war
Income (crops, livestock, non-farm and non-agricultural activities / Pests, drought and other climatic events / Cessation of extension services, subsidies on inputs or price support schemes, tax increases, / Commodity price falls, food price shocks / Marketing channels disrupted by war , embargo
Claims (loans, gifts, social contracts, social security / Reduction in nutrition programmes (for example, school feeding, supplementary feeding) / Rises in interest rates, changes in borrowing capacity / Loan recall, breakdown of reciprocity / Communities disrupted / displaced by war

Source: Maxwell & Frankenberger 1992

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© Getachew Diriba, 1999

(4) Time: Secure Access to enough food at all times.

Time refers to the extent/duration of food shortfall or access referring to chronic and transitory.

Chronic Food insecurity means that a household runs a continually high risk of inability to meet food needs of household members.

Transitory food insecurity occurs when a household faces a temporary decline in the security of its entitlement and the risk of failure to meet food needs of short duration. It focuses on intra- and inter-annual variations in household food & livelihood access.

Two types of Transitory food insecurity can be identified:-

Temporary Food insecurity occurs for a limited time because of unforeseen and unpredictable circumstances.

Cyclical or seasonal food insecurity occurs when there is a regular pattern in the periodicity of inadequate access to food.

In summary, one should note the following basic issues of food security

(1)Distinction between individual person and household - facing different risks of food security & follow different food security strategies.

(2)Food Security is a necessary but not sufficient conditions for adequate nutrition, the other condition being CARE and HEALTH - both of them inter-linked.

(3)It is misleading to treat Food Security as a fundamental need, independently of wider livelihood considerations: people may go hungry to preserve assets or meet other objectives.

(4)Sensitivity, resilience & sustainability of livelihood systems are crucial. Every intervention should support the perception of vulnerable livelihood systems.

(5)People's own perception of vulnerabilities and risks predominate in Food Security strategies.

Issues / Implications
Programming / Analysis (VAM)
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© Getachew Diriba, 1999

SESSION 2:FOOD SYSTEMS / ECONOMY ANALYSIS

THIS SESSION DISCUSSES:

There are districts in which the position of the rural population is that of a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that a ripple is sufficient to drawn him.

Tawney (quoted in Scott 1976: 1)

THE SYSTEMS APPROACH OF FOOD

Food must be linked with production, processing, storage, distribution and consumption, and as such can be viewed as a system (combining demand and supply equation), that explicitly links people in the analysis.

The supply side of household food security includes their access to productive resources that ensure production of food crops while the demand side of household food security consists of ability to generate cash income through sale of labour, livestock, cash crops and others, and food system combines them together.

There are four principal components of the household food system:

the household itself and its productive resources (using principally its own labour and land),

income earning component,

market exchange component, and

Institutional co-operation to mobilise social network and resources.

Figure 1.1 FOOD SYSTEMS/ FOOD ECONOMY

COMPONENT 1: household itself as a producing & consuming unit.

land,

labour (both for farm production and off-farm income opportunities),

household valuables,

ownership of livestock that generates cash income as well as providing draught power for crop production, and

crop yields and animal products to generate cash income or stored or processed for consumption

COMPONENT 2: cash income earning opportunities:

Off-farm employment

cash-for-work,

trading,

handicrafts,

farm labour,

casual work, and

other part time employment

Farm income

Transfer income

COMPONENT 3: the exchange through markets

Product markets:

sale of livestock and

livestock products or

sale of crop

Factor market:

purchase of input

purchase of capital goods

investment

COMPONENT 4: institutions that mediate flows of resources between households.

household themselves where decision about resource mobilisation and allocation is made involving a range of actions.

other households and community institutions (mobilisation of social network and resources), involving mutual help, resource sharing, food gifts.

the state providing famine relief, cash-for-work, food imports and buffer stock in strengthening food system.

the market is an institution where traders, consumers and the state take a part and range of exchanges takes place mediated through price.

The components in the food system are linked by a system of flows of resources, food, cash income and asset position to meet household consumption and other need.

MAIN FEATURES OF FOOD SYSTEMS IN SUBSISTENCE ECONOMIES.

At a community and larger scale of analysis:

It depends principally on one type of entitlement, (agricultural production).

Failure of production cannot be adequately compensated /supplemented by other entitlements.

It does not have an integrated and sufficiently functioning marketing system

There is no institutional means of employment outside the agricultural sector.

At times of production failure there is often no food at all to buy in many places. Where it does exist, it is sold at a very high price indeed.

Characterised by:

Increased vulnerability to environmental degradation,

Increased vulnerability to climatic variation;

Low technological inputs;

Vulnerability to food insecurity

It relies on household labour with little or no hiring in or out of labour;

production is aimed at the selfprovisioning of the household;

there are low capital and technological inputs and a high labour input;

low investment;

production is highly dependent on forces of nature, and

low labour and (often land) productivity.

At household scale of analysis

In subsistence agrarian economy survival is rooted in a complex combination of production activities and social exchange of agrarian societies.

Typical responses to food shortages are

*inter-family insurance,

*extended kin group reciprocity,

*gift,

*exchange (asset disposal)

*community mutual support,

*elite redistribution to the poor,

*solidarity and risk sharing,

*crop diversification,

*migration,

* Loans

*promising labour

SESSION 3: COPING STRATEGIES

Why is it that we are interested to understand coping strategies?

It can guide the design and implementation of interventions to increase household food security so as to compliment and reinforce local livelihood systems

The types of coping strategies employed by households not only indicate household vulnerability to food shortage, but also correspond to different types of government and donor responses,

To detect degrees of vulnerability based upon community/individual behaviour;

Mitigative interventions are those that:

Abate the impacts of the current emergency while reducing vulnerability to future emergencies;

Target the preservation of productive assets;

Reinforce and build upon existing patterns of coping;

Are implemented before divestment of productive asset begins;

Coping Strategies (Major categories)

(1)Risk Minimisation

Diversification of income

Choice of crops that fits and perform better in an agro-ecology

Vertical adjustment - planting at different elevation

Horizontal /spatial/ adjustment - eg. inter-cropping

Temporal adjustment - staggering planting time (eg. replanting, late planting, early planting)

Extending farming to marginal lands

Transition to different farming system (eg. pastoral to agro-pastoral or cereal)

2)Loss Management (Responses to lower then expected production)

Non-farm income

Sale of asset

Management of stocks & reserves (rationalisation)

Seasonal migration;

Promising labour (getting assistance in exchange of labour work on someone’s farm)

Reciprocal obligation (Food sharing, etc.)

Charcoal/fire wood selling

Reduced consumption

Wild food consumption

Borrowing

Mortgaging resource

Splitting livestock

Food aid

Crime

(3)Crisis Management

Selling productive asset (ox, cow)

Dispersion

Destitution

Card will be prepared of a situation that necessitates coping response

Negative /+ coping strategies (implications for programming and moral values)

SESSION 4: FOOD SECURITY INDICATORS

GENERALIZED LISTS OF HFS INDICATORS

I.SOCIO-ECONOMIC (BASELINE) INDICATORS

• Land ownership
• Farming systems
• Regional conflict
• Resource distribution (landless households)
• Income/employment sources (non-farm, off-farm)
• Family size (rate of population increase)
• Natural resource endowment (land degradation)
• Livestock ownership
• Subsistence ratio (extent of farm production & market participation)
• Access to social services (education, health, extension, water, road, etc)
• Farming systems
• Market facilities
• Risk factors

II.FOOD SUPPLY (PROCESS) INDICATORS

• Meteorological (rainfall)
• Pasture availability
• Water availability
• Agricultural crop production
• Food balance sheet
• Input supply
• Plant pest and disease
• Market prices
• Risk factors

III.FOOD ACCESS INDICATORS

• Risk minimisation
• Diversification
• Landuse practices
• Loss management strategies (dietary adjustment)
• Access to loans / credit
• Sale of livestock
• Sale of productive asset
• Seasonal migration
• Distress migration
• Household budget & consumption
• Nutritional status

Indicators also help us identify different risks and degrees of vulnerability.

Baseline vulnerability - underlying factors that influence exposure to food insecurity and households predisposition to the consequences.

Current vulnerability - composite of past and present events.

Future vulnerability - long-term food insecurity.

TIME DIMENSION OF FOOD SECURITY INDICATORS

1.Leading (Early) Indicators

This type of indicators provides signs of impending problem and may call for a detailed situation analysis to determine the extent of the problem, causes and need for monitoring. These are changes in conditions and responses prior to the onset of decreased food access.

These are:

Crop failure due to:-

• Inadequate rainfall
• Poor access to seed & other inputs
• Pest damage

Sudden deterioration of range lands conditions or conditions of livestock.

• Unusual migration / movements;
• Unusual number of animal deaths;
• Large numbers of young female animals being offered for sale;
• Decline in water and pasture availability

Significant deterioration in local economic conditions.

• Increases in price of grain;
• Unseasonable disappearance of essential foodstuff;
• Increase in unemployment among labourers & artisans;
• Unusual low levels of household food stock

Significant accumulation of livestock by some households due to depressed prices caused by oversupply.

2.Concurrent (Stress) Indicators

This occurs simultaneously with decrease access to food. These indicators are primarily access/ entitlement related. Once the nature & extent of the problems have been confirmed, interventions can be introduced that can focus on the causes or mitigate the effects. Examples:

• Larger than normal able-bodied family members in search for food or work;
• Appearance in the market of unusual amounts of personal & capital goods such as jewellery, farm implements, livestock (draught animals);
• Unusual increase in land sale, rent, mortgage;

• Increase in the amount of people seeking credit;
• Increased dependence on wildfood;
• Reduction in the number of meals;
• Increased reliance on inter-household exchanges

3.Trailing (Late) Indicators

These occur after food access declined. They reflect the extent to which the well-being of particular households and communities have been affected. Examples:

• Malnutrition
• Morbidity & mortality
• Land degradation
• Land sale, rent
• Consumption of seed stock
• Permanent out migration (signs that household failed to cope with food crises).

HOUSEHOLD FOOD SCURITY INDICATORS, BASED ON DIFFERENT PURPOSES

MAJOR TYPES (EXAMPLES) OF INDICATORS / DIFFERENT USES OF INDICATORS
EARLY WARNING FUNCTIONS (VAM) / PROGRAMME/PROJECTS (Project)
BASELINE INDICATORS
- LAND TENURE, HOLDING SIZE
- LIVESTOCK OWNERSHIP
- INCOME EARNING OPPORTUNITIES
- ENVIRONMENTAL STATUS
- POLITICAL STABILITY / EXPLAIN THE UNDERLYING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS & VULNERABILITIES.
... BASELINE INDICATORS ..... / DESCRIBES PRE-PROJECT SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STATUS.
.... BENCH MARK INDICATORS ....
PROCESS INDICATORS
-CROP PRODUCTION
- LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION
- RAINFALL, PEST INFESTATION
- INPUT SUPPLIES /CONSUMPTION
- ECONOMIC STATUS / DEFINES CURRENT RISKS AND VULNERABILITIES.
... LEADING (EARLY) INDICATORS .....
... CONCURRENT (STRESS) INDICATORS ..... / DEFINES PROJECT /PROGRAMME/ ACTIVITIES (PHYSICAL TARGETS AND PROCESSES REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE IT).
... PROCESS INDICATORS ....
OUTCOME INDICATORS
- CROP PRODUCTION (FAILURE, SUCCESS)
- LIVESTOCK (PRODUCTION, MORTALITY)
- NUTRITIONAL STATUS (DETERIORATION)
- HUMAN HEALTH (MORTALITY)
- MIGRATION
- POLITICAL (STABILITY, RISK) / IDENTIFIES EXTENT OF RISK, IMPACT OF AN EMERGENCY CONDITION
... CONCURRENT (STRESS) INDICATORS .....
.... TRAILING (LATE) INDICATORS .... / MEASURES PHYSICAL OUTPUTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS AT A GIVEN PROJECT PHASE.
.... PROGRESS INDICATORS ...
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
- CHANGES IN ACCESS TO RESOURCES
- CHANGES IN RESOURCE OWNERSHIP
- LEVEL OF RISK /VULNERABILITY
- IMPROVEMENT IN PRODUCTION, INCOME, EMPLOYMENT, LIVELIHOOD SECURITY, ETC. / DEFINES BEHAVIOUR OF AN ECONOMY
... BASELINE INDICATORS .... / DEFINES & MEASURES WHAT GAINS MADE AS A RESULT OF THE PROJECT INTERVENTIONS.
..... IMPACT INDICATORS ....

SOURCE: DIRIBA, 1991