Conclusion
In 2000 the World Bank (WB) reported that as many as 1,198 million people in developing and transition economies were making do with less than a dollar a day; 2,801 million were living on less than US$2.
Findings from the 200-Village Project survey confirm this scenario. In five Asian countries, namely, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand, five- to six-member rural households earn an average of 3.0 US$ a day. Eighty per cent of this is cash income, while the rest is received in kind.
These income levels, including the slightly elevated ones, have consigned the majority of Asian rural households to a state of chronic food insecurity. In fact, 26% of the surveyed households are not merely food insecure, but highly so. Hence, the survey confirms what experience has always borne out: households with higher incomes are more food secure. In three of the five countries, the correlation between the level of food security and household income is significant. In Bangladesh, 59% of households characterized as food insecure belongs to the two lowest income groups (i.e., up to $1,000 per year).
Declining incomes from agriculture and related industries are primarily to blame. The survey shows that agriculture is still the main source of livelihood, contributing 60% of household income. In many cases, agriculture is also a secondary source of income for most household heads and for their spouses.
The basic factors affecting food security are highlighted in the results:
Access to land. There is a positive correlation between food security and access to land. The food secure group has the highest number of owner-cultivators and the least number of share tenants and lessees. And where they do not own land, food secure households almost certainly have better leasehold arrangements than food insecure ones. On the other hand, the food insecure households are almost invariably share tenants or lessees, and only rarely are they owner-cultivators.
Productivity. There is a positive correlation between food security and agricultural productivity. Hence, the current low levels of farm productivity would explain the incidence of food insecurity. In all five countries, a larger percentage of households classed as food secure (albeit in varying degrees) harvested an average of about 3,500 kilos or more of rice per hectare than food insecure ones.
However, shifting to high input agriculture does not guarantee food security. The fact that majority of the
food insecure households practice traditional agriculture would seem to make a case for improvements in agricultural
technology. Asia?s farmers cannot hope to augment their incomes, much less thrive in the globalized trade of
agricultural goods, given their present practice of agriculture.
However, this does not imply that high-input
conventional agriculture is the answer. While the survey does show that farmers engaged in high-input conventional
agriculture are relatively better-off compared to other households, the former group?s better financial situation
may have preceded, rather than resulted from the shift in farming practice. For instance, it is more than likely
that the households engaged in conventional agriculture already owned ?good farm land? to begin with, as the hybrid
varieties perform best in irrigated fertile lands. They would also have the capacity to buy expensive external
inputs. However, what is disturbing is the fact that as much as 37 per cent of these supposedly well-off farmers
are food insecure in varying degrees.
Access to Credit and Markets The lack of access to needed services like credit is another factor that accounts for declining incomes in agriculture. The survey shows that food secure households are also those that are better able to avail of credit, either for farm or non-farm expenses, or both.
In Pakistan and the Philippines, for instance, food secure households have the strongest access to credit.
Lack of control over the marketing of their produce is another factor. The survey shows that traditional middlemen, such as retailers, wholesalers and traders, have a greater than 60 per cent market share of agricultural products (i.e., rice), while governments and cooperatives are able to buy only 20 per cent of it. This implies a precarious dependence by farmers on these middlemen for the distribution of their produce and their consequent defenselessness against predatory pricing by these third parties.
As the assessment with the community revealed, it appears that future food security is closely bound with improvements in the agricultural industry. Indeed, when the households were asked to name the factors that would ensure their future food security, support to agricultural production and access to land and support services got the highest rank among the responses.
Hence, in seeking to explain the causes of food insecurity in rural households, one necessarily deals with the reasons why agriculture, as practiced by Asia?s small farmers, has become unprofitable.
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Background
The Project
Status
Methodology
Conclusion
Recommendations Strategic intervention and initiatives. more...
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