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Investigating the sensitivity of household food security to agriculture-related shocks and the implication of social and natural capital

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Abstract

This paper examines the impact of agriculture-related shocks on consumption patterns of rural farming households using 3 years of data from South Africa. We make two key observations. First, agriculture-related shocks reduce households’ consumption. Second, natural resources and informal social capital somewhat counteract this reduction and sustain dietary requirements. In general, our findings suggest the promotion of informal social capital and natural resources as they are cheaper and more accessible coping strategies, in comparison to, for example, insurance, which remains unaffordable in most rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa. However, a lingering concern centres on the sustainability of these less conventional adaptation strategies.

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Notes

  1. The report is based on the first South Africa National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (SANHANES-1) conducted by the Human Science Research Council (HSRC). The survey is expected to occur periodically and report on the health and nutritional status of South Africans.

  2. According to the World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics report, there is an increase in the level of hunger in Africa, with one in every four Africans suffering from hunger. One of the reasons for this increment is climate change.

  3. The table includes statistics of the only available, sub-Saharan African countries: Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, Togo, Uganda and Zambia.

  4. An example will clarify our approach. According to the FAO conversion tables, 100 g of pumpkins, one of the main crops in the area, contains 26 calories (kcal). Hence, a household that harvests 2000 g (2 kg) of pumpkins will earn a total of 52,000 kcal for the household. This process is repeated for each crop produced by the household; thereafter, we add all calories and divide by the total number of household members.

  5. For a comprehensive review of social capital (informal and formal), see Wallace and Pichler (2009), Lovell (2009) and Bhandari and Yasunobu (2009).

  6. The FAO statistics also show the total dietary energy consumption, which is an aggregation of energy from (1) purchased food, (2) own production, and (3) other sources. Here, we observe that amongst those in the poorest percentiles the caloric consumption ranges between 1251.7 and 1765.2 kcal, while in the medium percentile this range is between 2036.7 and 2418.6 kcal. See Table 9. Note that, due to data limitation, we are unable to show these values from our data, because we cannot observe caloric values from groceries and livestock farming.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful and acknowledge helpful comments from participants at the Africa Climate Development Initiative (ACDI) seminar series and the 5th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (WCERE). We also thank the Environment for Development (EfD) Initiative and Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA) for financial support. The SUCSES panel study was funded by the South African National Research foundation. This work was indirectly supported by the Wellcome Trust (Grant 085477/Z/08/Z) through its support of the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental-Economics Policy Research Unit, School of Economics, University of Cape Town, Private Bag 3, Rondebosch, 7701, Cape Town, South Africa

    Byela Tibesigwa & Martine Visser

  2. MRC/Wits University Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa

    Mark Collinson

  3. INDEPTH Network, Accra, Ghana

    Mark Collinson

  4. School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa

    Wayne Twine

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  1. Byela Tibesigwa
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Correspondence to Byela Tibesigwa.

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Handled by Fabrice Renaud, UNU-Institute for Environment and Human Security (EHS), Germany.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 9.

Table 9 FAO food security statistics
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Tibesigwa, B., Visser, M., Collinson, M. et al. Investigating the sensitivity of household food security to agriculture-related shocks and the implication of social and natural capital. Sustain Sci 11, 193–214 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-015-0332-6

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