Food Security in Developing Countries: Household Livelihood Strategies in Indonesia: Food Security Analysis at Micro Level, North Sumatra

Ing. Libuše Valešová

Doctoral thesis

Abstract:

North Sumatra (Sumatera Utara) is one of the ten provincial territories of Indonesia, including Tobasa and Samosir regencies, selected for the study. From the agricultural point of view, it is an exceptionally rich region with high numbers in production of rubber, coconut, palm oil, candle nut and coffee. Consequently, the district is considered as one of the most developed provincial territories of the country. Despite of the relatively high socioeconomic status of North Sumatra province, households in rural areas have to tackle with food insecurity, particularly to poor dietary diversity and low intake of protein. The study investigates correlation and regression analyses designed to assess the respective relationships between the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale/ Prevalence (HFIAS/ HFIAP) as a measure of food access, the Household Dietary Diversity Score, as a measure of the dietary diversity and the Months of Adequate Household Food Provisioning (MAHFP) as a measure of food stability and possible determinants of food insecurity. Primary data collection was conducted in two time periods in 2013 and 2014, and included 192 households with 892 individuals. The purpose of the study is to (1) assess the food security status of rural households in both regencies, (2) identify the influence of selected factors on household food security condition and (3) deliver outcomes which might play an important role in establishing appropriate policies and intervention strategy to prevent and reduce food insecurity in North Sumatra. Due to the proven applicability in many studies, USAID Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance method is implemented for the comprehensive household food security analysis. The relations between the food security indicators and selected variables were statistically analysed with use of ANOVA, Chi-square tests, PCA, regression analysis and two-sample tests. The study reveals that there are significant differences between the regencies, given their divergent natural and social conditions. The overall results demonstrate that both regions suffer from low levels of household food security: av. HFIAS=6.11 (SD 6.59) and av. HDDS=5.30 (SD 2.57) and that 51.60 % of households are classified as moderately or severely food insecure. Further analysis investigates the relations among the all domains of household food insecurity and its possible determinants.

Keywords

Indonesia, Food access, Dietary diversity, HFIAS, Vulnerability

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 17. 5. 2017

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: prof. Ing. David Herák, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Doctoral programme / field:
Agricultural Specialization / Sustainable Rural Development in the Tropics And Subtropics