CHAPTER 3: FOOD SECURITY CONCEPTS
3.5 Coping against food insecurity
Southern Africa is no stranger to droughts and food shortages and the Africans have developed coping mechanisms (Campbell and Trechter, 1982; Colson, 1979; Flewet, 1986; Watts, 1983).
These coping mechanisms have included making strategic decisions about how to meet their needs such as the use of informal safety nets in which people draw on their social networks, food storage, crop diversity, migration, dietary adjustments to eating less and cheaper meals
61 and even scrounging for fruit and seeds, or more desperate measures shifting in intensity from the selling off of assets to migrating off the land. Migration and employment has also been another mechanism. Usually males will migrate to work in nearby towns or countries and send remittances (Lombard, 1985; p.38-40; Dupre and Guill, 1984). With modernisation, wage labour is the preferred option hence the migration. Because of this migration, in some places such as in East Africa the elderly, women and children have become the farm labourers which has also resulted in a change to the face of how food security is ensured (Cohen and Odihambo, 1989). Other mechanisms have included crop varieties biofortification, biotechnology to accelerate the development of drought tolerant and disease resistant crops (Brady 1985); and large scale high input commercial agriculture (La-Anyane, 1985; p. 28,).
Social protection programmes have also been put in place by some governments. These include public works programmes. Public works programmes, sometimes referred to as cash-for work or food-for-work, are best used as a livelihood protection mechanism and are best implemented with an employment guarantee (Berhane, Hoddinott, Kumar and Taffesse, 2011). For example, India’s National Employment Guarantee Scheme is a guarantee of employment when needed, effectively provides insurance and enables households to undertake more risk in their normal livelihood strategy than they would do in the absence of the programme. Households can then plant higher-risk and higher-yield crops, moving to higher income generation. Results from an evaluation of the Productive Safety Net Programme ( PSNP) in Ethiopia between 2006 and 2010 showed that participation in the PSNP and the Household Asset Building Programme raised the likelihood of using fertilizer by 19.5 percentage. Public works programmes also have the potential to create indirect benefits. Construction of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and irrigation systems can lead to significant second-round employment benefits and multiplier effects on local economies and agricultural productivity (Berhane, Hoddinott, Kumar and Taffesse, 2011).
Devereux et al. (2008) identify a number of actual and potential synergies and conflicts between smallholder agricultural policies and social protection policies in Africa. They note that in terms of macro‑level synergies, effective investments in agriculture should promote growth in agricultural production and rural incomes. This would result in economic growth which ideally should avail public resources for investment in social protection and promote
62 pro‑poor growth in incomes which would reduce social protection needs. They argue that in terms of macro‑level conflicts, agricultural and social protection policies typically compete for limited financial resources and political influence, since they tend to be regarded by governments and donors as distinct rather than complementary policy sectors, and their implementation is often uncoordinated and internally contradictory. In spite of this, Lund (2008) argued that social protection should be seen as an investment in the human potential of poorer workers in the informal economy, and especially for poorer women. In some instances, coping mechanisms have focused on the protection of entitlements which entails targeting all vulnerable households with support in the form of social transfers such as free food handouts, provision of employment and agriculture inputs. Experiences from Malawi show that the Social Cash Transfer Schemes reduced women and children’s risk-coping activities. Such activities included engaging in transactional sex or in hazardous child labour (Hall, Moore, Harper and Lynch, 2009).
Since women are considered to be more concerned about the general welfare of the household, in order to increase women’s control over transfers, it may make sense in some circumstances to distribute transfers in the form of food, because in many societies food is seen as the domain of women. Women are therefore more likely to have control over the use of transfers of food, and of cash-like instruments tied to food (Ligon and Sadoulet, 2007). Making transfers conditional on activities in women’s domain, such as taking children to health clinics, can also ensure that a cash transfer is given to women as opposed to the household head (who is generally male). However, it is important that programmes take into consideration the time demands placed on women, because evidence shows that time constraints can affect nutritional outcomes (Dawson and Tiffin, 2002). Intra-household redistribution has also been adopted in which there is preferential treatment of children, men and lastly women (Fernandes and Menon, 1987: 109).
Coping strategies adopted by families in the face of higher food prices and loss of income commonly impose a disproportionate burden on women. Zohir et al. (2010) asked people in urban slums In Bangladesh about their coping strategies after the 2008 food crisis. The most common strategies revealed from responses, and a review of other studies included spending out of savings, borrowing from friends and relatives, and the sale of assets. Households also reduce expenditures by replacing market-bought goods with home-produced substitutes—such
63 as prepared food or fuel wood. They also substituted family-provided services for services previously sourced from outside—such as child-care or elementary health care. Whenever possible, work time tends to increase, with household members who usually do not work—
women, children, and the elderly—being asked to work within the home and outside (Björkman, 2006). It is not always clear if such work is decent or not. ILO (2012) summed up decent work as opportunities for work that are productive and deliver a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organise and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity and fair treatment of all women and men. Agriculture based workers may not always enjoy such conditions, especially if the work is not regulated. Decent work has become a universal objective and has been included in major human rights declarations, UN Resolutions and outcome documents from major conferences including Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the World Summit for Social Development (1995), World Summit Outcome Document (2005), the high level segment of ECOSOC (2006), the Second United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (2008-2017), Conference on Sustainable Development (2011) and in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015).