Status of household food insecurity in Bajura district of Nepal

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.

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...

2016

SAARC Journal of Agriculture

2009

For the purpose of this study, sample was selected through stratified random sampling from Baitadi district, which falls in rural Far-western Hills of Nepal. Both income and consumption measures of poverty revealed that problem of poverty is more severe in Melauli, which is relatively remote village devoid of transportation, communication, market, and other developmental services. Education, occupation, gender of household head, and family size are found to be the most important factors that affect income-poverty as well as consumption-poverty (food insecurity). Caste and landholding size has a significant effect on food insecurity. Households with illiterate head, head engaged in laboring, female-head, larger family size, Occupational Caste household, and small holding are suffering from both income-poverty and consumption-poverty in greater extent. Income-poverty measure shows the higher incidence, gap, and severity of poverty compared to food insecurity for all the variables cons...

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.

Journal of Institute of Science and Technology, 2019

The main aim of the present study is to analyse the condition of food insecurity in Bundelkhand"s Banda district through Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). Simultaneously, study also assess the structural validity and internal consistency of HFIAS. Study uses primary data collected through field investigation during December 2014 through structured questionnaire and focus group discussions (FGDs). Multistage stratified random sampling has been used for selecting the villages and households for the survey. A total of 240 households have been surveyed for data collection. For measuring household"s food insecurity HFIAS 9-item questionnaire has been opted. Study shows that household"s food insecurity is positively linked to household"s inability towards food access because of low income and poverty. On the basis of the score obtained from HFIAS the households were categorised into severely, moderately, mildly food insecure and food secure in order to find out the extent of food insecurity. The result reveals that, 24.58% of the sampled households were severely food insecure followed by 30.0% and 24.17% as moderately and mildly food insecure and remaining 21.25% were food secure. Cronbach"s alpha coefficient is used to assess the internal consistency of the tool and rotated principal component factor analysis is used analyse the structural validity of HFIAS. On the basis of the value of Cronbach"s alpha (0.86) the tool displayed a good internal consistency. Factor analysis highlighted two key factors accountable for food insecurity in the study area i.e., insufficient food quality and insufficient food quantity eaten by the members of the households.

2019

Food security exists when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Similarly food insecurity at household level refers to the inability of the household to secure adequate food for meeting the dietary needs of its members. The study aimed to assess the prevalence and factors associated with food security from rural community of Parbat district. A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among 385 participants of 21 wards from seven different Village Development Committee of Parbat district. A systematic random sampling technique was used to select the participants. Data were collected through face to face interview using the Nepalese version of Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. Ethical approval was taken from Nepal Health Research Council. Bivariate analysis was done to identify the associated factors of food security. The study...

IJMRAP, 2023

Introduction: A major issue the world faces today is ensuring that households residing in different countries have access to enough food to maintain a healthy life. Food insecurity is highly prevalent in middle and low income countries. Malnutrition is the most serious consequence of food insecurity and poor nutrition can lead to reduced immunity, impaired physical and mental development and reduced productivity. This study examines the hunger level and factors associated with household food security in Nepal. Methods: This study used data from NDHS 2016. Total of 11,040 households were studied in this cross-sectional study. Food security and Hunger level were measured by using HFIAS and HHS, respectively. The association between Background characteristics and household food security was identified, using chi-square test and Binary logistic regression (Bivariate and multivariate). Results: This study revealed that 4.6% of households suffered from moderate to severe household hunger. After adjusting for background characteristics, ethnicity, family size, Household head's education, household wealth, Development region and province wise residence were significantly associated with household food security. However, sex of the household head, current marital status, presence of U-5 children at home, place of residence and ecological zone did not affect the household's food security significantly. Conclusion: The present study found that there is high food insecurity and which varies according to different socio-demographic characteristics. To improve food security in Nepal, intervention should focus on improving wealth and education especially for Dalit and those residing in the Karnali province, Sudurpaschim province and province 2.