Household food insecurity in the poorest province of South Africa: level, causes and coping strategies FOR APPROVAL

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1 Food Sec. DOI /s CASE STUDY Household food insecurity in the poorest province of South Africa: level, causes and coping strategies L. Musemwa & V. Muchenje & A. Mushunje & F. Aghdasi & L. Zhou Received: 21 May 2013 /Accepted: 19 January 2015 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and International Society for Plant Pathology 2015 Abstract This study determined the level and causes of food insecurity of 150 households, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa using the Household Food Insecurity Access Prevalence (HFIAP) and the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). The majority (67.7 %) of the households interviewed were severely food insecure, the main cause being the abandonment of own food production. Average HFIAS for the sample was and ranged from 0 to 27. Most households were dependent on government social grants for household food requirements rather than own food production or food purchases, using wages and remittances. Households in the study area were net purchasers of food, as is the situation in most rural households of South Africa. High levels of unemployment (97.5 %) among household heads were observed in the study areas. In times of food shortages, most households relied on borrowing from shops against future payment. Most of the food insecurity coping strategies used by the households had longterm detrimental effects. The ultimate way to improve the food security in rural South Africa is to increase per capita incomes and/or ensure that households have the resources and capacity to produce their own food through farming. L. Musemwa (*) Department of Agricultural Economics, Education and Extension, Bindura University of Science Education, P. Bag 1020, Bindura, Zimbabwe lmusemwa@gmail.com Keywords Food security. Food shortage. Net purchaser. Rural. Social grants. Vulnerability Introduction Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO 1996, 2002). Physical access implies the means to produce their own food (subsistence farming) whereas economic access refers to the ability to purchase food on the market. In South Africa, food security is part of Section 27 Constitutional rights, which states that every citizen has the right to have access to sufficient food and water, and that Bthe state must, by legislation and other measures, within its available resources, avail to progressive realisation of the right to sufficient food^ (SA Constitution 1996). At the national level, South Africa is food secure (NDA 2002). It produces its main staple foods, exports its surplus food, and imports what it needs to meet its food requirements. However, achieving food security, especially at household level, is still a major concern (Aliber and Hart 2009). The latest food security estimates for South Africa, using different proxies (income measures, anthropometric measures of undernutrition and experiences of hunger) suggest that between 41 % (Stats SA 2007) and 51.6 % (Labadarios et al. 2009) of households are food insecure. Food insecurity is limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (Anderson 1990). As poverty is the root cause of food insecurity, the ultimate way to improve the situation is to increase per capita incomes and/or ensure that V. Muchenje : A. Mushunje : F. Aghdasi : L. Zhou Risk and Vulnerability Science Centre, University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa V. Muchenje Department of Livestock and Pasture Science, University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa A. Mushunje Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa

2 L. Musemwa et al. households have the resources and capacity to produce their own food through farming. The problem of household food insecurity in South Africa is further aggravated by a range of factors that have lately come into play and drive the price of food. Domestic electricity supply constraints and ever-increasing oil prices are examples of vital factors in this regard. For instance, the price of electricity rose by at least 100 % between 2008 and 2011 (Inglesi-Lotz 2012). From January to early April 2013, the price of fuel rose by nearly 20 %. High energy prices raise food prices through increased cost of production and transportation (Hanjra and Qureshi 2010). Rising food prices in South Africa pose serious problems for the urban and rural poor as most are net buyers of food. According to Evans (2009), food prices will increase gradually over the next decade, worsening household food insecurity, even if there are some fluctuations and the occasional drops in prices. The main aim of this paper was therefore to determine how severe the food insecurity is in the poorest province of South Africa, and why this is the case. This will help to determine if there is a need to intervene in order to return people to a normal food security situation in the short term and/or long term. It is essential to note that for every insecure food situation, diverse alternatives of response programmes are needed and do not always include social grants. Only research can help decide the most suitable response for a specific situation. The paper also examines different coping strategies of households facing food insecurity. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (2006), coping strategies are activities that people choose as ways of living through difficult times brought on by some sort of shock to their normal means of livelihood and way of living. Materials and methods Study area The study was conducted in the Eastern Province of South Africa. According to Statistics SA (2000), households in the Eastern Cape are the poorest in the country. Nearly 70 % of the total of 1.33 million households in the province spent less than ZAR whilst only 7.6 % spent more than ZAR 3500 per month on all types of consumption. For the purpose of this study, households in Nkonkobe and Tsolwani Local Municipality under the Amatole and Chris Hani District Municipalities, respectively, were randomly selected. Tsolwana covers an area of approximately 6,000 km 2 with a density of about 6 people/km 2 (Stats SA 2011). The municipality s population is estimated at 33,281 as per the 2011 census. The majority of households in Tsolwana are poor and indigent. According to Statistics SA (2011), approximately 83.4 % of households earn a gross income of no more than ZAR 1600 per month. The Nkonkobe Local Municipality has an estimated population of 160,311 some of whom reside on farms and scattered settlements. The majority reside in rural villages. Nkonkobe has high rates of unemployment (67.61 %) and poverty (71.43 %) and a low dependency ratio (61.3 %). Dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labour force (the dependent part) and those typically in the labour force (the productive part). The dependent part usually includes those under the age of 15 and over the age of 64. The productive part makes up the population in between, ages According to Stats SA (2011), the majority of people in the two municipalities depend on government social grants for their livelihoods. Sampling procedure A multi-staged sampling procedure was used. Chris Hani and Amatole District Municipalities were randomly selected from the eight district municipalities that exist in the Eastern Cape Province. Within each of these two district municipalities, one local municipality was randomly selected. In Chris Hani District Municipality, Tsolwani Local Municipality was selected while in Amatole, Nkonkobe Local Municipality was selected. Seventy and 80 households were randomly selected in Tsolwani and Nkonkobe local municipalities, respectively. The person most involved with food preparation and meals was interviewed at his/her homestead by trained enumerators under the supervision of the researcher in October In the absence of this person, another adult who was present and ate in the household for the past 4 weeks was interviewed. Data collection A pre-tested structured questionnaire was the main instrument used for data collection. The questionnaire encompassed household socio-economic information as well as nine frequency-of-occurrences questions that were asked in order to determine how often a food insecurity condition occurred. There were four response options representing a range of frequencies (0=none, 1=rarely, 2=sometimes and 3=often). Questions related to causes of household food insecurity as well household coping strategies for food insecurity were also comprehensively captured in the questionnaire. The respondents answered all the questions on behalf of the household and all its members. Applications of food insecurity scales have generally used either 12-month, 6 month, or 30 day recall periods (Coates 2004). In this study a 30 day recall period was used mainly due to more accurate and reliable responses being associated with a shorter recall period. 1 During the survey period 1USD was equivalent to ZAR 8.67

3 Household food insecurity in South Africa Data analysis To measure the degree of household food security, the Household Food Insecurity Access Score (HFIAS), adapted from the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) programme was used. This method was developed by Coates et al. (2007) and is used annually to estimate the prevalence of food insecurity in the USA. In this investigation it was calculated for each household by summing the codes for each frequency-of-occurrence question. The frequency-of-occurrence questions were coded as 0 for all cases where the answer to the corresponding occurrence question was Bno^. The maximum score for a household is 27 (the household response to all nine frequency-of-occurrence questions was Boften^, coded with response code of 3); the minimum score is 0 (the household responded Bno^ to all occurrence questions). The higher the score, the more food insecurity (access) the household experienced. The lower the score, the less food insecurity (access) a household experienced. To examine the validity of the food insecurity score, the analytic strategy developed by Frongillo (1999) was used. It assesses accuracy by comparing the food insecurity score with comparison measures, these either being expected determinants or consequences of food insecurity, other measures of food insecurity, or the observer measure. The average Household Food Insecurity Access Scale Score was then calculated by dividing the sum of HFIAS Scores in the sample by the sample size. The average HFIAS score is a continuous variable which is sensitive to capturing small increments of changes over time. The Household Food Insecurity Access Prevalence (HFIAP) indicator, which categorizes households into four levels of household food insecurity (access): food secure and mild, moderately and severely food insecure, was also calculated. Households were categorized as increasingly food insecure as they responded affirmatively to more severe conditions and/or experienced those conditions more frequently. A food secure household experienced none of the food insecurity (access) conditions, or just experienced worry, but rarely. A mildly food insecure (access) household worried about not having enough food sometimes or often, and/or was unable to eat preferred foods, and/or ate a more monotonous diet than desired and/or some foods considered undesirable, but only rarely. However, it did not cut back on quantity nor experience any of three most severe conditions (running out of food, going to bed hungry, or going a whole day and night without eating). A moderately food insecure household sacrificed quality more frequently, by eating a monotonous diet or undesirable foods sometimes or often, and/or had started to cut back on quantity by reducing the size of meals or number of meals, rarely or sometimes but did not experience any of the three most severe conditions. A severely food insecure household cut back on meal size or number of meals often, and/or experienced any of the three most severe conditions (running out of food, going to bed hungry, or going a whole day and night without eating), infrequently or rarely. In other words, any household that experiences one of these three conditions even once in the last 4 weeks (30 days) was considered severely food insecure. The frequency of households in each food security category was calculated by dividing the number of households in each food security category by the total number of all the sampled households. Following the classification of households according to their food insecurity status, causes and coping strategies in the current situation were analysed using descriptive statistics employing both frequency and means. SPSS version 20 was used to analyse the data. Challenges encountered during fieldwork Respondents tended to under report their income as well as their assets, possibly because they feared being dropped from government social grants. It was only after the enumerators probed and assured them that the information was confidential and was not going to be supplied to government officials that respondents shared their actual income and assets as well as their food security status. Households income was verified by checking on their monthly expenditures. When interviewers were not able to interview some households because of special occasions, they selected another day for the interview or, if this was not possible, they selected another household, rather than conduct the interview using an earlier day in the week. Results Household characteristics The majority of the sampled households were female headed (67.1 %). The domination of female headed households was also observed for all the food insecurity categories but not the food secure group (Table 1). Most adults in the households were married (47.5 %) whereas single, widowed and divorced categories made up 29.1, 21.5 and 1.9 %, respectively. This order also applied to all the food insecure groups; however, for the food secure group, the single class dominated, followed by the widowed and the married. No divorced individuals were observed for the food secure, mildly food insecure and the moderately food insecure groups. For all the food security categories, household heads aged above 60 years were the most prevalent, although their score for being severely food insecure was equalled by households with heads aged between 30 and 50. Household heads that had primary education dominated all the food security categories. The average household size was 5 and ranged from 1 to 15. A larger household means there is more pressure on food requirements. On the other hand, a larger household would

4 L. Musemwa et al. Table 1 Household socio-economic status Food security status Frequency (%) Variable Food secure Mildly food insecure Moderately food insecure Severely food insecure Aggregate Gender Male Female Marital status Married Single Divorced Widowed Age < > Level of Education Not educated Informal Grade Grade Tertiary mean more capital from social grants but only if children and the old, who qualify for social grants pre-dominated. A larger family size is only financially better off if all the members earn some income. In the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, employment opportunities are limited and climatic conditions always hinder agricultural productivity: hence the majority of the households are heavily dependent on food parcels and social grants from the government. Food secure household had smaller families (average of 2 members) than food insecure households (mean of 5 household members). The majority (65 %) of the interviewed household heads were selfemployed of which 85 % were in the agricultural sector. Only 2.5 % were formally employed whilst 32.5 % were unemployed. Further analysis also indicated that, among all the variables discussed above, only employment status of household head was significantly related to HFIAP (P<0.05). The average household income was ZAR 1719 and varied with food security status (HFIAP). Food secure households had the least mean household income (ZAR 1271). However, Table 2 the income per capita of this category was the highest as they had the fewest members (Table 2). The majority (68 %) of the interviewed households were severely food insecure, whereas the moderately food insecure, food secure and the mildly food insecure households were 24, 4 and 4 %, respectively. Municipality was not related to HFIA P(p>0.05) but agricultural activity was, signifying that agriculture plays varying and important roles in alleviating household food insecurity. Agricultural activities practised by households in the study area included livestock production, poultry, vegetable and crop production. The average HFIAS for the sample was and ranged from 0 to 27, (higher scores implying greater food insecurity). Further analysis indicated that the mean HFIAS varied across HFIAP groups (p<0.05). Only the mean HFIAS for the food secure group and the mildly food insecure group were not significantly different form each other (p>0.05) Fig. 1. Few households (1.9 %) often encountered the problem of spending a whole day and night without eating and only the Distribution of income by food security status Variable Food security status Food secure Mildly food insecure Moderately food insecure Severely food insecure Average household income (ZAR) Average income per capita (ZAR)

5 Household food insecurity in South Africa Fig. 1 Household food insecurity access prevalence 68% 4% 4% 24% Food secure Milldly food insecure Moderately food insecure Severely food insecure same percentage of household members often went to sleep hungry because there was not enough food. However in 12.7 % of households there were often occasions when there was no food of any kind because of lack of resources. Even higher percentages of household members often ate fewer or smaller meals (21.5 and 27.8 %, respectively) or sometimes Did you or any household member go a whole day and night without eating anything because there was not enough food? Did you or any household member go to sleep at night hungry because there was not enough food? Was there ever no food to eat of any kind in your household because of lack of resources to get food? Did you or any household member have to eat fewer meals in a day because there was not enough food? Did you or any household member have to eat a smaller meal than you felt you needed because there was not enough food? Did you or any household member have to eat some foods that you really did not want because of a lack of resources to obtain other Did you or any household member have to eat a limited variety of foods due to a lack of resources? (39.2 and 36.1 %, respectively). Around one-third of household members ate some foods that they did not want often or sometimes because of lack of resources and the majority of households had members sometimes not able to eat the kinds of food they preferred because of lack of resources. Preference can refer to the form of a particular food (e.g., white rice vs Were you or any household member not able to eat the kinds of foods you preferred because of a lack of resources? Did you worry that your household would not have enough food? Fig. 2 Food security challenges Food security challenges Frequency (%) Often Sometimes Rarely No

6 L. Musemwa et al. parboiled rice), type of staple (e.g., yellow vs. white corn) or high quality food (e.g., a piece of meat or fish). Preferred foods may or may not be of nutritionally high quality. About one-third of households worried sometimes or rarely that they would not have enough food (Fig. 2). In aggregate, the main cause of food insecurity was the abandonment of own food production (Table 3). Most households depend on grants for household food requirements at the expense of own food production. The latter could be linked to the lack of agricultural inputs and poor yields due to climatic factors. Though social grants are supposed to be a remedial intervention by the government, the majority of the household in rural South Africa depend heavily on them as a main or only source of household income (Stats SA 2007). At the end of March 2012, more than 2.5 million people in the Eastern Cape Province were benefiting from government social grants (SASSA 2012). One challenge for households mainly depending on government social grants as a strategy for ensuring food security is that they are already low and do not increase proportionally with inflation. Larger households put a strain on the already constrained grant and hence increase vulnerability to food insecurity. The least but still important causes of household food insecurity are related to the effects of climatic change on agriculture e.g., high temperatures and frequent droughts (Table 3). These may impact heavily on crop and livestock productivity which supplement substantially household food requirements in rural communities. Table 3 Causes of household food insecurity Cause of household food shortage Mean rank (Frequency) In light of the above, intervention strategies, which ensure that households diversify their sources of household food requirements, are crucial and these may include encouraging household members to initiate agricultural-related enterprises through, say, provision of a package that would motivate households to participate in agriculture. This package could include land and water rights, agricultural inputs, training and institutional support. Although most household were headed by very old women, labour, which may be used for agriculture, is available in abundance from other members of the households. The package would ensure that even if the social grants were not enough to meet household food requirements, households could still survive by supplementing them with own food production through farming. Furthermore, participating in agriculture increases the probability of availability of and access to adequate and nutritious food. Households involved in agriculture, however, need to adopt improved seed varieties, soil fertility management practices and water conservation techniques such as mulching that enhance agricultural productivity in the face of climate change. Household coping strategies for combatting food insecurity Coping strategies are the methods used by households to survive when confronted with unanticipated livelihood failure (Ellis 2000). They are employed to mitigate the effects of not having enough food to meet the household s needs. Different coping strategies are adopted by households at Food secure Mildly food insecure Moderately food insecure Severely food insecure Aggregate Number (7) (6) (38) (107) (158) Abandonment of own food production 1.33 (3) 1.40 (5) 1.52 (25) 1.39 (36) 1.43 (69) Poor harvest due to drought 1.00 (1) 1.00 (2) 2.00 (1) 1.25 (4) Poor harvest due to high temperatures 2.00 (1) 2.00 (1) Poor harvest due to low temperatures (snow) 1.00 (1) 1.00 (1) Loss of livestock due to drought 2.00 (1) 2.00 (1) Lack of water sources/reservoirs 3.00 (1) 1.75 (4) 2.00 (5) Lack of agricultural inputs 3.00 (2) 3.00 (1) 1.71 (34) 1.81 (37) Lack of business startup capital 2.00 (1) 1.62 (8) 1.55 (33) 1.57 (42) Retirement 2.00 (1) 1.40 (5) 1.50 (6) Retrenchment 3.00 (1) 1.33 (3) 1.75 (4) Income not increasing at the rate of inflation 2.00 (1) 1.33 (9) 2.05 (20) 1.83 (30) Increase in household size 2.22 (9) 1.95 (20) 2.03 (29) Death of the main food provider 1.00 (2) 1.00 (2) 1.33 (6) 1.30 (23) 1.27 (33) Other (specify) 1.00 (1) 1.00 (1) 1.63 (8) 1.56 (9) 1.53 (19)

7 Household food insecurity in South Africa different poverty levels and they may be negative or positive. However, for many poor households, coping strategies are negative such as severe reduction in food consumption and selling productive assets. The most popular coping strategy was borrowing food from shops against future payment (48.1 % of interviewees) and was commonly used amongst all the food security categories with the exception of the mildly food insecure class. They also often borrowed money to purchase food from friends and relatives and looked for petty jobs. Only 6.3 % of the sampled households did not use any coping strategy and they indicated that they had learnt to live with the situation (Fig. 3). Poor and marginal households tended to rely on informal credit sources with high interest rates (Strauss Commission 1996). Borrowing cash may be a coping strategy but may have negative effects in the future to the extent of threatening future food security status. Most of the coping strategies used by the households investigated had long-term damaging effects. These included selling household assets such as livestock, which may affect future productive capacity and future borrowing power. Borrowing may even result in a household being in debt for life thereby affecting life time food security. Reduction in the number of meals and food quality may result in illness and death in some severe cases and this may affect future agricultural productivity. Illness also causes sharp falls in income and asset values and increases medical expenditures. Together these degrade affected individuals command over commodity bundles, including the nutrients necessary for an active and healthy life. Looking for petty jobs and relying on food aid were the only coping strategies that did not pose future negative effects. Further analyses indicated that out of all the coping strategies in Fig. 3, selling of crops and looking for petty jobs were the only strategies that were significantly related to household food security status (HFIAP). Conclusion This study analysed the food security status of households in Nkonkobe and Tsolwani Local Municipalities. In mitigating the effects of not having enough food to meet a household s needs, most of the households used strategies that were not sustainable. For instance, borrowing always comes with the cost of paying back the borrowed amount plus interest and inevitably this will have a negative impact on poor households that are already struggling. The majority of the people in the study areas were net food purchasers as opposed to net sellers. In most rural settings in developing countries, households are net producers of food. Hence there is a need to impress on rural households in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa the importance of subsistence farming as a way of enhancing household food security. Within agriculture, growth strategies are needed which lay particular emphasis on generating jobs and incomes for the poorest groups, including women. High unemployment rates in the study area meant that the majority of the households were heavily dependent on social grants from the government for their livelihoods. This situation is not sustainable as it is difficult for the government to increase the grants at the rate of inflation as government sources of revenue are limited. The inability of the government to increase social grants has severely reduced the Fig. 3 Coping strategies to household food insecurity

8 L. Musemwa et al. purchasing power of social grants beneficiaries, resulting in the increase of severity of food insecurity among households who mainly depend on them. The South African social welfare system on its own is inadequate in solving the problem of household food insecurity. Therefore the grant system should be coupled with aggressive work programmes and employment creation policies which empower the poor and provide them with resources that enhance their livelihoods without or with minimum government dependency. Public works programmes are self-targeting in nature, and may result in the construction of useful assets, especially community infrastructure such as feeder roads. They target the poor through adjusting either the wage rate (down) and/or the work requirement (up). The wage rate is in most cases uninviting to the non-poor as it is in most cases below the local market rate. In some cases, payment is given in form of food parcels. Paying in the form of food for work done generally attracts the poorest (including women) rather than cash-for-work, which tends to be dominated by men. The prospects of non-farm activities for the alleviation of food insecurity should be explored, as the majority of the rural poor are no longer interested in farming due to poor returns, and youths view farming as an unpleasant business enterprise. There is a need to make food production and living in rural areas attractive for all, particularly young people, to counter the attractions of cities. Education in the form of capacity building should be conducted to empower people so that they can contribute to the resolution of their problems. For food security policies and programmes to succeed in rural areas of South Africa, a bottom-up approach should be used. This means that local actors participate in decision-making about strategies for the alleviation of food insecurity and in the selection of the priorities to be pursued in their local area. Participation should not be limited to the initial phase but should extend throughout the implementation process and to the monitoring and evaluation phase of any strategy decided upon. Acknowledgments This paper is based on a pilot study on assessing the food security status of households in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Efforts from the Eastern Cape Food Security and Nutrition Advisory Committee in designing the survey tool are greatly appreciated. The research was undertaken by the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Centre at the University of Fort Hare, funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) with funds supplied by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), South Africa. References Aliber, M., & Hart, T. G. B. (2009). Should subsistence agriculture be supported as a strategy to address rural food insecurity? Agrekon, 48(4), Anderson, S. A. (1990). Core indicators of nutritional state for difficultto-sample populations. Journal of Nutrition, 120, Coates,J.(2004).Experience and expression of food insecurity across cultures: Practical implications for valid measurement.^. Washington: Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project, Academy for Educational Development. Coates, J., Swindale, A., & Bilinsky, P. (2007). Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) for measurement of household food access: Indicator guide (v. 3). Washington: Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project, Academy for Educational Development. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996). za/documents/constitution/1996/index.htm. Accessed 13 Apr Ellis, F. (2000). Peasant economics, farm household and agrarian development. Newcastle: Cambridge University Press. Evans, A. (2009). The feeding of the Nine Billion: Global food security for the 21st Century. A chatham house report. London: The Royal Institute for International Affairs. FAO. (1996). Rome declaration on world food security and world food summit plan of action (pp ). Rome: World Food Summit. FAO. (2002). The State of Food Insecurity in the World Rome. Frongillo, E. A. (1999). Validation of measures of food insecurity and hunger. Journal of Nutrition, 129, 506S 509S. Hanjra, M. A., & Qureshi, M. E. (2010). Global water crisis and future food security in an era of climate change. Food Policy, 35, Inglesi-Lotz,R.(2012).The Sensitivity of the South African Industrial Sector s Electricity Consumption to Electricity Price Fluctuations (pp ) University of Pretoria Department of Economics Working Paper. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (2006). How to conduct a food security assessment: A step-by-step guide for National Societies in Africa. Online: Publications/disasters/food_security/fs-assessment.pdf. Accessed 25 Oct 2013 Labadarios, D., Davids Y.D., Mchiza, Z., & Weir-Smith, G. (2009). The assessment of food insecurity in South Africa (Unpublished paper). Centre for Poverty, Employment and Growth, Human Sciences Research Council. NDA (2002). The Integrated Food Security Strategy for South Africa. Pretoria. Online: foodsecurity/policies.pdf. Accessed Oct SASSA. (2012). South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) Annual Report 2011/12. Accessed 25 Oct Stats SA. (2000). Measuring poverty in South Africa. Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Stats SA. (2007). The general household survey Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Stats SA. (2011). Census Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. Strauss Commission. (1996). Final report of the commission of inquiry into the provision of rural financial services. Pretoria: Government Printer.

9 Household food insecurity in South Africa Dr Lovemore Musemwa is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Education and Extension, Bindura University of Science Education. He is a member of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa. He is also an active member of the Eastern Cape Province Food Security and Nutrition Advisory Committee and the Eastern Cape Province Disaster Management Advisory Board. His areas of research interest include impact of climate change on household food security, rural livelihoods and livestock marketing. Prof Voster Muchenje is a National Research Foundation (NRF) Y2 (Young Promising)- rated scientist. He is the Head of the Department of Livestock and Pasture Science, University of Fort Hare where he has set up a state-of-the-art meat science laboratory. He supervises postgraduate students in his Meat Science and Animal Welfare Research Group. He is a member of the SA Society for Animal Science (SASAS) and the American Meat Science Association (AMSA) and is an Assistant Editor for the South African Journal of Animal Science. Prof Abyssinia Mushunje is the Head of Department (HoD) of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Fort Hare. He lectures on a wide range of courses and supervises postgraduate students in the Department. His research interests range from Resource Economics and Natural Resource Management to Land Reform. He is involved in a number of departmental research programmes and currently manages a collaborative programme for the strengthening of the teaching of economics at the high school level in South Africa. Prof Farhad Aghdasi is the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Agriculture at the University of Fort Hare. Professor Aghdasi is currently the NRF grant holder for the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Centre (RAVAC) for food and water security in the Eastern Cape and is involved in several community engagement projects including the AgriPark, the Dairy, the Nguni Cattle, the Piggery; and the Bio-Gas project funded by the Department of Science and Technology. His passion is to increasingly use the postgraduate research projects and postdoctoral activities for innovations in the betterment of the lives of the community, job creation, collaboration with industry and adding quality to teaching and learning of undergraduates. Dr Leocadia Zhou is the Manager of the University of Fort Hare Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Centre (RAVAC). The centre, headed by Dr Zhou, is a product of the Department of Science and Technology s 10 year Global Change Grand Challenge, also framed as Global Change Research Programme (GCRP). The GCRP embraces the wider sphere of global change although its main focus is on climate change. It includes changes in economics, politics, land use and atmospheric conditions, as well as loss of biodiversity. Dr Zhou is a Steering Committee Member of the Eastern Cape Provincial Research Database (South Africa). Dr Zhou has published papers in internationally refereed journals.