Dataset Information

Determinants of household food access among small farmers in the Andes: examining the path.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Household food access remains a concern among primarily agricultural households in lower- and middle-income countries. We examined the associations among domains representing livelihood assets (human capital, social capital, natural capital, physical capital and financial capital) and household food access.

Design

Cross-sectional survey (two questionnaires) on livelihood assets.

Setting

Metropolitan Pillaro, Ecuador; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and Huancayo, Peru.

Subjects

Households (n = 570) involved in small-scale agricultural production in 2008.

Results

Food access, defined as the number of months of adequate food provisioning in the previous year, was relatively good; 41 % of the respondents indicated to have had no difficulty in obtaining food for their household in the past year. Using bivariate analysis, key livelihood assets indicators associated with better household food access were identified as: age of household survey respondent (P = 0.05), participation in agricultural associations (P = 0.09), church membership (P = 0.08), area of irrigated land (P = 0.08), housing material (P = 0.06), space within the household residence (P = 0.02) and satisfaction with health status (P = 0.02). In path models both direct and indirect effects were observed, underscoring the complexity of the relationships between livelihood assets and household food access. Paths significantly associated with better household food access included: better housing conditions (P = 0.01), more space within the household residence (P = 0.001) and greater satisfaction with health status (P = 0.001).

Conclusions

Multiple factors were associated with household food access in these peri-urban agricultural households. Food security intervention programmes focusing on food access need to deal with both agricultural factors and determinants of health to bolster household food security in challenging lower- and middle-income country contexts.

SUBMITTER: Leah J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10271732 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Determinants of household food access among small farmers in the Andes: examining the path.

Leah Jessica J Pradel Willy W Cole Donald C DC Prain Gordon G Creed-Kanashiro Hilary H Carrasco Miluska V MV

Public health nutrition 20120221 1

<h4>Objective</h4>Household food access remains a concern among primarily agricultural households in lower- and middle-income countries. We examined the associations among domains representing livelihood assets (human capital, social capital, natural capital, physical capital and financial capital) and household food access.<h4>Design</h4>Cross-sectional survey (two questionnaires) on livelihood assets.<h4>Setting</h4>Metropolitan Pillaro, Ecuador; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and Huancayo, Peru.<h4>Sub ...[more]

PMID: 22348247

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Project description:BackgroundStunting results from decreased food intake, poor diet quality, and a high burden of early childhood infections, and contributes to significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although food insecurity is an important determinant of child nutrition, including stunting, development of universal measures has been challenging due to cumbersome nutritional questionnaires and concerns about lack of comparability across populations. We investigate the relationship between household food access, one component of food security, and indicators of nutritional status in early childhood across eight country sites.MethodsWe administered a socioeconomic survey to 800 households in research sites in eight countries, including a recently validated nine-item food access insecurity questionnaire, and obtained anthropometric measurements from children aged 24 to 60 months. We used multivariable regression models to assess the relationship between household food access insecurity and anthropometry in children, and we assessed the invariance of that relationship across country sites.ResultsAverage age of study children was 41 months. Mean food access insecurity score (range: 0-27) was 5.8, and varied from 2.4 in Nepal to 8.3 in Pakistan. Across sites, the prevalence of stunting (42%) was much higher than the prevalence of wasting (6%). In pooled regression analyses, a 10-point increase in food access insecurity score was associated with a 0.20 SD decrease in height-for-age Z score (95% CI 0.05 to 0.34 SD; p = 0.008). A likelihood ratio test for heterogeneity revealed that this relationship was consistent across countries (p = 0.17).ConclusionsOur study provides evidence of the validity of using a simple household food access insecurity score to investigate the etiology of childhood growth faltering across diverse geographic settings. Such a measure could be used to direct interventions by identifying children at risk of illness and death related to malnutrition.

Dataset Information

Determinants of household food access among small farmers in the Andes: examining the path.

Objective

Design

Setting

Subjects

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Determinants of household food access among small farmers in the Andes: examining the path.

Similar Datasets

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