Food security in older australians

Household Level Determinants of Food Insecurity in Rural Ethiopia

Introduction. Currently, Ethiopia, in particular, the rural areas of Ethiopia, faces high levels of food insecurity. In spite of the fact that there have been many studies on food security, most of them have been conducted in specific national settings. Hence, the determinants of food insecurity should be assessed at the national level. Therefore, this study was primarily aimed to identify the determinant factors of household food insecurity in rural Ethiopia. Method. A cross-sectional Ethiopian socioeconomic survey (ESS) data collected from September 2018 to August 2019 was utilized. A sample of 3115 households was selected from 316 clusters across rural Ethiopia using a two-stage probability sampling technique. To identify the determinants of food insecurity, logistic regression was applied. Results. Among 3,115 households, 50.05% of them were food insecure. Factors such as the household head being aged from 30 to 64 (AOR = 0.786, 95% CI: [0.635, 0.973]), widowed, divorced, or separated (AOR = 1.588, 95%CI: [1.001, 2.518]), literate (AOR = 0.702, 95%CI: [0.590, 0.834]), household aid (AOR = 1.339, 95%CI: [1.089, 1.648]), drought-affected (AOR = 0.640, 95%CI: [0.507, 0.808]), nonagricultural business (AOR = 0.655, 95%CI: [0.472, 0.908]), dependency ratio from 50 to 75% (AOR = 0.680, 95%CI: [0.534, 0.867]), having 6 to 10 livestock (AOR = 0.644, 95%CI: [0.496, 0.836]), and more than 10 livestock (AOR = 0.362, 95% CI: [0.284, 0.461]) were found to be significantly associated with the household’s food insecurity at 5% level of significance. Conclusion. The household head’s age from 30 to 64, being literate, drought-affected, having nonagricultural business, dependency ratio from 50 to 75%, and owning more than 10 livestock have been negatively affecting food insecurity. While supporting households, a “widowed, divorced, or separated” household head has had a positive effect on food insecurity in rural Ethiopia positively influencing food insecurity in rural Ethiopia. Policymakers need to pay special attention to very young and old-aged household heads, adult education, household self-help, livestock improvement, and entrepreneurship while implementing poverty reduction programs.

Development of Spatial Model for Food Security Prediction Using Remote Sensing Data in West Java, Indonesia

The food crisis is a problem that the world will face. The availability of growing areas that continues to decrease with the increase in food demand will result in a food crisis in the future. Good planning is needed to deal with future food crises. The absence of studies on the development of spatial models in estimating an area’s future food status has made planning for handling the food crisis suboptimal. This study aims to predict food security by integrating the availability of paddy fields with environmental factors to determine the food status in West Java Province. Food status modeling is done by integrating land cover, population, paddy fields productivity, and identifying the influence of environmental factors. The land cover prediction will be developed using the CA-Markov model. Meanwhile, to identify the influence of environmental factors, multivariable linear regression (MLR) was used with environmental factors from remote sensing observations. The data used are in the form of the NDDI (Normalized Difference Drought Index), NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), land surface temperature (LST), soil moisture, precipitation, altitude, and slopes. The land cover prediction has an overall accuracy of up to 93%. From the food status in 2005, the flow of food energy in West Java was still able to cover the food needs and obtain an energy surplus of 6.103 Mcal. On the other hand, the prediction of the food energy flow from the food status in 2030 will not cover food needs and obtain an energy deficit of up to 13,996,292.42 Mcal. From the MLR results, seven environmental factors affect the productivity of paddy fields, with the determination coefficient reaching 50.6%. Thus, predicting the availability of paddy production will be more specific if it integrates environmental factors. With this study, it is hoped that it can be used as planning material for mitigating food crises in the future.

The Future Challenges of Food and Agriculture: An Integrated Analysis of Trends and Solutions

The availability, access, utilization and stability of food supply over time are the four pillars of food security which support nutrition outcomes. Addressing the issues raised globally around these pillars remains a challenge. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 2017 report “The future of food and agriculture: trends and challenges” outlined the challenges which will have to be addressed in order for sustainable agricultural services to cost-effectively meet the growing food demand of the world population. In this study, we systematically analyzed the future challenges of the agriculture and food systems by focusing on (1) their root causes and trends; and (2) the interlinkages among the solutions proposed to address the challenges using social network analysis tools. It found that, if trends leading to extreme poverty are reversed, several other challenges will also be partially addressed and that climate change has the highest impact on the network of trends. Improving food security would have positive impacts on food access and utilization. The clear outline of the qualitative relationships among challenges presented and insights will help their prioritization by decision makers. However, additional in-depth quantitative analysis is necessary before measures identified to tackle the challenges could be effectively implemented.