CHAPTER FIVE

Causes of Livelihoods and Food

Insecurity and Livelihoods and
Food Security Strategies
Cont.…
 Causes of livelihoods and food insecurity are categorized as:
 Environmental causes
 Agro climatic causes
 Disaster risk
 Anthropogenic causes
Environmental Causes of livelihoods and food insecurity include:
 Damage to the natural environment through deforestation, over-
cultivation, etc.
 Soil Erosion
 Decline in soil fertility
 Depletion of water tables
 Decline in rainfall
 Destruction of alternative sources of food and income
CONT.…

Agro-climatic Causes
 Pests and livestock diseases: diseases affecting
livestock or crops can have devastating effects on
food availability especially if there are no
contingency plans in place.
 Climate change: the impacts of climate change
include changing productivity and livelihood
patterns, economic losses, and impacts on
infrastructure, markets and food security.
 Cash crops dependence: countries which depend
on cash crops are at high risk of food crisis
because they do not produce enough food to feed
the population.
CONT.…
Disaster Risks
 Natural disasters and climate variability are the
major sources of vulnerability to food insecurity.
 They particularly affect those in countries that
largely depend on rain fed farming and those
highly dependent on agriculture.
 Examples of such natural disaster include drought,
land slide, flooding…
 Studies show that drought aggravates
vulnerability to food shortages and erosion of
assets making households more susceptible to
future crises.
CONT.…
 Poor people are also less able to cope with the
impacts of climate shocks and variability.
 These events can result in:
 Massive crop losses
 Loss of stored food
 Damage to infrastructure
 Consequent increases in the available food prices
 Food scarcity
CONT.…

Anthropogenic causes
 Military conflicts

 Wars aggravate food insecurity by:

 Damaging land and disrupting trade system

 Displacing people from their homes
 Diverting money towards military expenditures
 Lack of emergency plans: history of the severest
food crises shows that many countries were
completely unprepared for a crisis and unable to
resolve the situation without international aid.
CONT.…
 Corruption and political instability: in spite of criticism
lately, the international community has always send help
in the form of food supplies and other means which saved
millions of lives in the affected regions.
 However, the international aid often did not reach the
most vulnerable populations due to a high level of
corruption and political instability in many Third World
countries
 Rapid population growth: in 2009, the world population
was 6 billion. By 2050, it is predicted to reach 9 billion. Our
current output of food is not enough to feed a population of
9 billion.
 Gender inequality: both leads to and is a result of food
insecurity.
 Women face discrimination both in education and
employment opportunities and within the household, where
their bargaining power is lower.
CONT.…
 On the other hand, gender equality is described as
instrumental to ending malnutrition and hunger.
 Women tend to be responsible for food preparation and
childcare within the family and are more likely to spend
their income on food and their children's needs.
 Women also play an important role in food production,
processing, distribution and marketing.
 They often work as unpaid family workers, are involved
in subsistence farming and represent about 43% of the
agricultural labor force in developing countries.
 However, women face discrimination in access to land,
credit, technologies, finance and other services.
 Empirical studies suggest that if women had the same
access to productive resources as men, women could boost
their yields by 20–30%; raising the overall agricultural
output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4%.
CONT.….
 In general, livelihood/food insecurity caused by:
 Unstable social and political environments that prohibit
sustainable economic growth
 War and civil strive
 Macroeconomic imbalances in trade
 Natural resource constraints
 Poor human resource base
 Gender inequality
 Inadequate education
 Poor health
 Natural disasters, such as floods and locust infestation and
 The absence of good governance
 All these factors contribute to either insufficient
national food availability or insufficient access to
food by households and individuals.
LIVELIHOOD AND FOOD SECURITY STRATEGIES

 Strategies are the other components of livelihood

frame work.
 Livelihood strategies consist of activities that
generate the means of individual/household survival.
 Livelihood activities are occupations in which one or
more members of a household engage to generate
earnings for making livelihood.
 Livelihood strategies are divided into three broad
types according to the nature of activities
undertaken:
 Agricultural intensification / extensification
 Livelihood diversification and
 Migration
CONT.…
Agricultural intensification/extensification: is capital-
led and/or labor-led intensification; or using more
land/resources.
 These strategies mainline continued or increasing
dependence on agriculture, either by intensifying resource
use through the application of greater quantities of labour
or capital for a given land area, or by bringing more land
into cultivation or grazing.
Livelihood diversification: involves broadening the range
of on-farm activities (e.g. adding value to primary products by
processing or semi-processing them), or to diversify off-farm
activities by taking up new jobs.
 It may be undertaken by choice for accumulation or
reinvestment purposes, or of necessity either to cope with
temporary difficulty or as a more permanent
adaptation to the failure of other livelihood options.
CONT.…
Migration: migration may be voluntary or
involuntary movement.
 As a critical strategy to secure off-farm
employment it may rely on and/or stimulate
economic and social links between areas of origin
and destination.
 Relationship structures, social and cultural
norms may strongly influence who migrates.
 Migration will have implications for the asset
status of those left behind, for the role of women
and for on-farm investments in productivity.
CONT.…
 Sustainable livelihood strategy should be
inclusive, connected, equitable,
prudent/wise, and secure.
 An inclusive livelihood strategy: implies
human development over time and space
whereby the welfare of people and the health
of ecosystem both near and far, in both the
present and the future is not compromised.
 A connected livelihood strategy: is based on
the recognition that ecological, social, and
economic systems are interdependent and that a
nation cannot attain sustained level of welfare
without social equity and stable ecosystem.
CONT.…
 Equitable livelihood strategy: suggests inter-
generational, intra-generational, and
interspecies fairness through fair distribution
of resources and property rights, both within and
between generations.
 Prudential livelihood strategy: implies duties
of care and prevention technologically,
scientifically, and politically.
 Secured livelihood strategy: demands safety
from chronic threats and protection from harmful
disruption.
INSTITUTIONAL STRATEGIES
 Institutions are the social cement which link stakeholders
to access to capital of different kinds to the means of
exercising power and so define the gateways through
which they pass on the route to positive or negative
[livelihood] adaptation.
 Institutions are arrangements that coordinate the behavior of
individuals in society.
 Institutions are sets of regulatory norms.
 An institution is a stable, valued, recurring pattern of behavior.
 Institution can be formal or informal.
 Formal institutions are generally defined as the law
sphere, with constitutions, regulations and organisations.
There is a direct connection between formal rules and a
political economyy framework such as governance,
property rights, and judiciary system. Thus, reinforcing of
the formal institutions is guaranteed by the legal system.
 INFORMAL INSTITUTIONS
They are a set of social norms, conventions, moral values,
religious beliefs, traditions and other behavioural norms
that have passed the test of the historical time and that
determine the individual behaviour.
The informal institutions can be called the Old Ethos or the
Carriers of History. These informal rules are part of the
dynamic evolution of a community and heritage of its
culture. In addition these rules or institutions are self-
reinforcing in course of time trough mechanisms such as
imitations, traditions and other forms of teaching.
They also serve as sanctions that facilitate the self-
reinforcing process such as: community membership, fear
of expulsion, reputation and fear to be the only one not to
respect the rules.
A complex framework
Example of category of economic institutions
 Trust
 Information
 Property rights and Privatizations
 Rent-seeking, Groups of pressure and
lobbies
 Bribe/corruption
 Reputation and Values
 Mechanisms of selection,
 Competition and cooperation
 Intermediary
 Bureaucracy
 Organizations
 Laws and constitutions
 Industrial relations
There has to be reciprocity
The important conclusion
 Social agents
 generate,
 influence
 and support institutions.

BUT

 Institutions create social agents.

A good institution must survive a dual set of

“making sense” and “being fit” for its mission.
CONT’D
 Institutions include civic, political and economic
institutions , or any other customs, rules or common
law that is an important feature of society.
 Examples include judicial systems, public services,
credit systems and markets.
 People's protection and welfare depends on:
 Accountable political systems
 Rule of law
 Functioning judicial systems and
 The provision of public services
CONT.…
 Institutions can be described as 'the way
things are done'. They can be:
 Formal (e.g. laws, markets, government policies)
 Informal (e.g. social customs and conventions)

The institutions that operate within a given

context are critical to sustainable livelihood
outcomes.
 It is important to identify which government,
civic and private-sector institutions operate in a
given livelihood setting to determine their
relative strengths and weaknesses in delivering
goods and services essential to secure livelihoods.
CONT…
 Livelihood strategies and outcomes are not only dependent
on access to capital assets or constrained by the
vulnerability context; but they are also transformed by the
environment of structures and processes.
 Structures are the public and private sector organizations
that:
 Set and implement policy and legislation
 Deliver services and
 Purchase, trade, and perform all manner of other functions
that affect livelihoods.
 Processes embrace the laws, regulations, policies,
operational arrangements, agreements, societal norms, and
practices that, in turn, determine the way in which
structures operate.
 Policy-determining structures cannot be effective in
the absence of appropriate institutions and
processes through which policies can be implemented.
CONT.…
 Processes are important to every aspect of
livelihoods.
 They provide incentives that stimulate people to make
better choices
 They grant or deny access to assets
 They enable people to transform one type of asset into
another through markets
 They have a strong influence on interpersonal relations

 One of the main problems the poor and vulnerable

face is that the processes which frame their
livelihoods may systematically restrict them unless
the government adopts pro-poor policies that, in turn,
filter down to legislation and even less formal
processes.
INDIGENOUS STRATEGIES
 Indigenous Knowledge can be conceptualized as the
unique, traditional, local knowledge existing
within and developed around the specific conditions of
women and men indigenous to a particular
geographic area.
 Indigenous Knowledge as holistic, dynamic and
changing community-based knowledge is generated
by a process of trial and error through social
practice.
 Indigenous Knowledge can help to alleviate poverty
if:
 it is effectively applied in agriculture and
 supported by appropriate technology interventions that
consider peoples’ circumstances.
CONT.…
 In developed and developing countries all over the world,
farmers and indigenous and local communities have
traditional knowledge, expertise, skills and practices
related to food security and to food and agricultural
production and diversity.
 Indigenous Knowledge is farmers knowledge:
 based on experience
 tested over centuries of use
 developed over time and
 continues to be developed by people in a given community
 Characteristics of indigenous knowledge:
 Orally transmitted
 Survival is given priority
 Unique for that community
 Mostly use local inputs
 Inherited and developed by farmers
CONT.…
 Indigenous Knowledge is an unwritten body of
knowledge.
 It is held in different brains, languages and skills, in
as many groups, cultures and environment as are
available today.
 It covers the whole range of human experience.
Hence, as IK is closely related to survival and
subsistence, it provides a basis for local-level decision
making in:
 Food security
 Human and animal health
 Education
 Natural resource management and various other
community-based activities
CONT.…
 Farmers adopt a wide range of indigenous
agricultural practices based on generations of
experience, informal experiments and intimate
understanding of their environments.
 Indigenous agricultural practices are:
 Generated within communities
 Location and culture specific
 The basis for decision making and survival strategies
 Not systematically documented
 Concerned with critical issues of human and animal
life: primary production, human and animal life,
natural resource management
 Oral and rural in nature.
CONT.…
 The application of indigenous agricultural
farming for example has reflected in the
following:
 Indigenous soil preparation and planting materials
 Indigenous methods of controlling pests and diseases
 Indigenous methods of maintaining soil fertility
 Indigenous methods of controlling weeds
 Indigenous methods of harvesting and storage
CONT.…
 Traditional knowledge is used to observe, monitor and
report weather-related changes in food and
agricultural systems and to adjust to these climate-
related impacts.
 The loss of such knowledge results in increased food
insecurity, poverty and conflicts, while livelihoods
decline and biodiversity disappears.
 Communities apply traditional knowledge in early
warning systems that calculate risks or detect
extreme weather events, droughts or floods.
 They use it in adapting subsistence strategies for
agriculture, fishing, forestry and foraging; improving
water and resource management; enhancing
ecosystems; selecting which resources to use to
mitigate or adapt to climate change effects.
CONT.…
 Traditional indigenous and local communities
conserve and use domestic and wild species
sustainably, which helps to ensure food security,
improved livelihoods, incomes and participation in
markets.
 These communities also provide food to other societies
all over the world.
 The application of traditional knowledge in areas as:
 Ecosystem and landscape management,
 Water management,
 Soil conservation,
 Biological control of pests and diseases,
 Ecological agriculture and livestock practices, and
 Plant and animal breeding often enhances food
security and prevents or alleviates poverty.