Operationalizing Household Food Security in Rural Nepal

2017

This paper assesses household food security and identifies the factors affecting it in two mountainous districts of Nepal using census data from 2011/12. A binary logit model has been used because the dependent variable is dichotomous. In the study districts, farmland expansion was the major contributor to the increased production of major crops over the period 1974/75 to 2013/14. The yield growth of major crops, with the exception of potato and wheat, remained below the population growth in these districts. On average, households experienced no food shortages for about 9 months out of the year; cultivated land per household was 0.63 ha, of which around 29% was irrigated; 22% of the households were female headed; and 60% of the households worked in allied activities alongside agriculture. The results show that household food security was positively affected by the following variables: male-headed household, household members with both agricultural and allied occupation, age of the h...

SAARC Journal of Agriculture

Using the agricultural census data of 2011/12, this paper has attempted to identify the determinants of household level food security in the eastern region of Nepal. Being the censored type sample population, tobit model has been used. On an average, the households experienced no food shortages for 8.5 months, the cultivated land per household was 0.85 hectare and around 34 percent of the cultivated land was irrigated. The results showed that the size of the land holding, nearness to the market, male headed household, households members with agriculture and allied occupation and the educational level of household head were positive and significant variables while household size was negative and significant variable to food security. It was also revealed that the hills and the mountains were more food insecure than Terai region. Hence, investment in human capital, creation of off-farm employment opportunities, increasing physical access through markets and roads development and access to land and augmenting their quality are needed to further improve the food security situation. Similarly, special programs should be implemented targeting female headed households as they are more food insecure than male headed households.

Nepalese Journal of Development and Rural Studies

Food security in mountain areas has always been a matter of concern. The purpose of this study is to examine the food security situation and coping strategies in rural households in a mountain area. Following the descriptive research approach, data is collected through implying household survey, semi-structured interview, and observation method. The food security situation is analyzed through four dimensions of food security: food availability, access to food, utilization of food, and stability. The result shows households depend mainly on markets as their main source of household food and households follow inadequate food consumption and the majority of households' food consumption patterns constitute either borderline or poor. Households apply short-term food consumption coping strategies such as lending money from friends or buying food on credit. The study recommends that farming households be supported in terms of both short-term and long-term strategies to improve food pro...

The state of food (in)security in rural communities of different ecological zones of the Kaligandaki Basin, Nepal, is assessed using a Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). The data were collected from 360 households using face-to-face interviews. The results show poor availability of food from subsistence production in the Middle-Mountains and Trans-Himalaya, whereas most households with sufficient purchasing power are able to access additional food from the market. Net food security is poor, with the highest level of insecurity in the Middle-Mountains, followed by the Trans-Himalaya and the Tarai. Although weaknesses were found in application of the HFIAS method due to respondent bias in subjective assessments of food insecurity in producer-consumer rural households, the method was found to be effective for rapidly incorporating utilization and stability elements into appraisals. Although not comprehensive, this approach has the potential to complement other forms of knowledge for designing targeted food policy in Nepal.-This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

The study reveals that 10.2% of the sampled households in Nepal suffer from chronic food insecurity, i.e., neither are they able to produce sufficient food from their farms nor earn the food security threshold income for deficit months. With the highest and the lowest exponential value of coefficient obtained from binary logistic regression model, it is concluded that any program targeting occupational caste and small landholding farm category or landless will contribute significantly to reduce food insecurity. The provision of employment opportunities for economically active age group, thus, reducing dependency ratio from 1.2 (economically active population) to 0.7 (economically active age group) can also contribute significantly to reduce food insecurity. Significant positive coefficient of family size squared shows the increase in the probability of being foodinsecure with the increase in family size. In addition, an increase in irrigation availability can contribute significantly to reduce food insecurity. A significant proportion of male-headed households and households residing in Tarai are food-secure. This justifies the need to target female-headed households and households residing in Mountain and Hill in any program aimed at resolving food insecurity. A negative and significant association of household’s participation in community organizations and food insecurity fortifies the need for inclusion of vulnerable groups such as occupational caste, female-headed households, households with illiterate heads, small landholding farm category or landless, and households residing in Mountain and Hill (including some target communities in Tarai) in community organizations. Furthermore, making these communities a target of food security programs can help significantly to reduce the incidence of food insecurity.

International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research, 2019

Food security is the global issue as the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) has explicitly considered zero hunger in the Goal 2. Nonetheless, in the recent years, the number of hunger population is in constant rise. Therefore, the paper attempts to estimate the determinants of the per capita food expenditure from the household expenditure. The data of National Living Standard Survey 2010/11 by the Central Bureau of Statistics Nepal has been used for the study. The multiple regression analysis has been performed. The per capita food expenditure has been used as the dependent variable. The model was found significant and the R-squared value was found 0.77. All the explanatory variables – except gender and education level (completed grade 5-7), were found significant. The number of households, area related variables urban rural and few development regions were found negatively associated with the per capita food expenditure.

Nepal public policy review, 2023

Food security means access to food along with food production and availability to every individual at a reasonable cost according to the calorific needs of people. To assure food safety to 30 million Nepali people, it is essential to utilize every piece of available farmable land in each geographic region of seven provinces. We analyzed individual household food intake, dietary energy adequacy, and nutritional status and needs at the ward level of Nepal. We used a decadal (2010-2020) average food production of different crops per unit of farmable area, and food needs for people living in that ward based on their gender and nutritional requirements to perform various activities in different geographic regions of seven provinces. We assumed three food consumption scenarios: a) traditional practices of meeting dietary needs only from major crops; b) consuming major and minor crops; and c) consuming major and minor crops and meat and fruit products. Our analysis revealed that it is essential for Nepal to implement policies that will encourage crop diversification comprising both major and minor crops and inform the public about the nutritional values of various crops that can be grown utilizing location-specific environments in different geographic regions of seven provinces. Our findings assist in policy instrumentation that will pursue farming communities to supplement their dietary needs with diverse crop products and suggest government set aside some matching funds to encourage remitters, who return to Nepal with knowledge and financial resources, to engage in agriculture. We also argue that crop diversification is needed to assure farm productivity if certain crops fail due to unforeseen environmental calamities.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

European Journal of Sustainable Development, 2014

Food security has been one of the major developmental objectives in India. Though India has sufficient food production yet the achievement did not percolate down to households. This paper reports on an investigation into the food security status in Vaishali district of Bihar. Data were gathered across 16 administrative divisions in the district and eventually 959 farmers' households were sampled using stratified random sampling techniques. This allowed computing composite food security index to assess the relative status of food security of the sampled farmers. The findings revealed that 75 % of the sampled households have low food security. Within farmers' categories, most of the large farmers had high food security. Medium farmers experienced moderate food security while semimedium, small and marginal farmers were having low food security. Bivariate regression analyses between food security and its components of all the farmers shows food availability has a major impact on food security as 93 % variation in food security is explained by variation in food availability. The study suggested that priority should be accorded for creating rural employment opportunities, providing infrastructure for increasing production and creating awareness of education for long term sustainability of food security in the study area.

Realizing the importance of food self-sufficiency in achieving the household food security, this paper tried to assess the food self-sufficiency situation in village areas of Nepal. Agriculture was the main source of livelihood and Bahun/Chhetri was the dominant ethnic group. Involvement of households in agriculture was found declining with the attainment of higher level of education resulting into higher concentration of illiterate and just literate manpower in this sector. The major resource determining food self-sufficiency of households, land holding and coverage of irrigation was higher among Bahun/Chhetri ethnic group and in Tarai ecological region. The better irrigation coverage together with relatively high access to production resources led to the higher crop yield among Bahun/Chhetri ethnic group and in Tarai. Thus, Tarai was experiencing surplus food crops production, which was merely enough to fulfill the deficit of Hills and Mountain regions. Food self-sufficiency was achieved among 72% of households in Tarai region while the figure of Mountain region was only 11%. Similarly, the highest proportion (53%) of Bahun/Chhetri households achieved food self-sufficiency compared to mere 10% of Occupational caste households. Together with small land holding and low productivity, production shift from food crops to cash crops were also the major factors responsible for food self-insufficiency. Purchasing was the most dominant means to fulfill the deficit food. About 20% of food self-insufficient households were unable to meet minimum level of food security threshold income for deficit months. This constituted 10.2% of sample households, who were in chronic food insecurity situation. The incidence of chronic food insecurity as well as poverty gap was the highest in female-headed households, Mountain region, Occupational caste, daily wage laborers and small landholders. Education received the highest priority for the cash income expenditure followed by food items and agriculture promotion. This expenditure patterns show the positive indication to move towards food self-sufficiency and ultimately to food security if provided with better off farm employment opportunities and better market for both farm produces and essential inputs.