Structure
Contributing Factors and Food Security Dimensions
- o Agriculture
- o Livestock
- o Markets
- o Water and Sanitation
- o Feeding Practices
1st level Food Security Outcome Indicators
Food Consumption Outcomes
Livelihood Outcomes
2nd level outcome indicators
Nutrition
Mortality
Monitoring Evaluation Accountability & Learning
Four Pillars of Food Security:
For food security objectives to be realized, all four dimensions must be fulfilled simultaneously
Physical AVAILABILITY of food
Food availability addresses the “supply side” of food security and is determined by the level of food production, stock levels and net trade
Economic, physical and social ACCESS to food
An adequate supply of food at the national or international level does not in itself guarantee household level food security. Concerns about insufficient food access have resulted in a greater policy focus on incomes, expenditure, markets and prices in achieving food security objectives.
Utilization is commonly understood as the way the body makes the most of various nutrients in the food. Sufficient energy and nutrient intake by individuals is the result of good care and feeding practices, food preparation, diversity of the diet and intra-household distribution of food. Combined with good biological utilization of food consumed, this determines the nutritional status of individuals
STABILITY of the other three dimensions over time
Even if your food intake is adequate today, you are still considered to be food insecure if you have inadequate access to food on a periodic basis, risking a deterioration of your nutritional status. Adverse weather conditions, political instability, or economic factors (unemployment, rising food prices) may have an impact on your food security status.
General Guidance on Indicators:
Contributing factors are best used to understanding HH vulnerabilities and drivers of food insecurity. For example, understanding the level of crop production is critical to understanding the level of food availability.
Contextualizing contributing factors and vulnerabilities based on livelihood zones and seasonal calendars. Using recognized livelihood zone maps can enable the analyst to match key contributing factors with vulnerabilities the household may fact. For example, understanding the household’s dependency on crop production to fulfil food intake can allow the analyst to put more emphasis on understanding the level of crop production.
Analysis should focus on understanding both the risk of household becoming acutely food insecurity, through understanding household resilience, and present level of food security. For example, households which rely on single sources of food, such as own production, are likely to be suspectable to hazards and are at higher risk of acute food insecurity.
Understanding current risk levels, through exposure to hazards and current vulnerability, should be considered for current and likely future levels of acute food insecurity. Contributing factors, including level of coping capacity, can be used to provide general guidance on household vulnerability, and thus susceptibility to shocks. For example, understand a households dependence on livestock for accessing food, either directly or through trade, should be considered when analysing indicators related to livestock, such as livestock disease outbreaks.
Analysis of the indicators should focus on following the standard IPC analytical framework for acute food insecurity, along with similar frameworks . Indicators which capture household vulnerability, such as engaging in agriculture or access to markets, should be reflected in understanding both availability and access to food. Further, moving from the four dimension of food security should be reflected through the analysis of first level food security outcome indicators, such as food consumption score or household hunger scale. Lastly, food security status is a casual pathway for second level outcome indicators, malnutrition and mortality.
When possible, disaggregate the data by age group, location, gender, and other vulnerability criteria.
Agriculture & Livestock: these indicators measure agricultural inputs and assistance which affect peoples’ ability to produce food. When analysing acute food insecurity these indicators should be analysed in conjunction with outcome indicators to understand the core drivers (see below).
Markets: these indicators can be used to measure a household’s financial access to food. Combining market indicators with proxies for household wealth and market prices/terms of trade is highly recommended for understanding the degree of financial access to food.
Assistance: these indicators measure whether aid, in the form of food, cash and other non-food assistance has been received
Household Diet Diversity Score (HDDS), Household Hunger Scale (HHS), Food Consumption Score (FCS), Reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI) and Livelihood Coping Strategies (LCS) are recognized within the IPC as direct outcome indicators and typically best used to measure the level of acute food insecurity.
HDDS and FCS are typically recognized as proxies for food quality; best used to understand the quality and nutritional value of foods that people are eating.
HHS and rCSI are typically recognized as proxies for food quantity; best used to measure the quantity of food consumed but does not provide insight into the nutrition value of the food consumed.
When possible combining indicators should be used to understand convergence and build on the strengths and weaknesses of indicators
o Pairing proxies for
food quantity with food quality (i.e. FCS and HHS)
o Examining different wealth groups and vulnerabilities in relation to outcome indicators – i.e. Households with poor food consumption scores and the percentage of household expenditure on food.
Livelihood coping strategy (LCS) indicates strategies, such as asset stripping, engaged by households to meet food consumption gaps.
o The primary use of the LCS is to know if households are using coping strategies to maintain or mitigate food consumption gaps – which is a sign of food insecurity.
o For example, a household may have a low HHS (0-2) and borderline FCS; indicating only moderate food consumption gaps. However, they may be engaging in multiple emergency level livelihood coping strategies, suggesting that the household is only able to meet food consumption gaps by engaging in unsustainable livelihood coping. Such as excess selling of livestock, consuming green harvest, selling household assets, or begging.
Nutritional Status and Mortality reflect a number of drivers, including food security, and are typically recognized as lagging indicators, as a rise/decrease in either typically takes a longer period of time after drivers of food insecurity have occurred.
Guidance for Indicator Selection:
It is advisable to limit the number of indicators selected to those that are required based on the objective of the survey and reporting. Since all context are unique in varying degrees and reporting requirements may change, it is not possible to give a set of indicators to always collect. However, there are guidline that can be followed:
Focus on collecting at least on indicator from each of the four pillars of food security (Availability, Access, Utilization, Stability) - suggested indicators include crop production, market access, access to water, diet diversity.
For IPC analysis – focus should be on outcome indicators. The IPC requires at least 2 outcome indicators for classification. Outcomes indicators are broken into 1st and 2nd level outcome indicators:
- 1st level: Food Consumption Score, Household Diet Diversity Score, Reduced Coping Strategy Index, Household Hunger Scale, Livelihood Coping Strategy.
- 2nd level: Global Acute Malnutrition by Weight for Height (GAM WHZ), Under Five Crude Death Rate (U5 CDR), Crude Death Rate (CDR)
Livelihood zones and context specific indicators should always be considered – i.e. In agricultural dependent locations, the focus should be on crop production and restraints to crop production. In Pstolirst livelihood zones, focus on livestock ownership and/or lack of. In market dependent locations, physical and financial access to markets should be highly considered. Of course, in the majority of locations – there is a blend between all three.
Table 1 provides a brief overview of some core indicators and where they fit within the IPC framework.
Note on Disaggregation
Disaggregation of data will be especially helpful for determining which groups are most at risk and affected by a crisis. As appropriate, each indicator should be disaggregated by sex (male/female), age, beneficiary category, pregnant and lactating women, people living with HIV, disability, traders, market actors, producers, activity, food assistance (fortified blended foods, ready to use foods, special nutritional products), non-food item, agricultural item, urban/rural areas, head of household (female headed HH, child (male/female) headed HH [under 18], person with disability headed HH, elderly (male/female) headed HH [over 60]), religious, ethnic or political identities, community and household. The effectiveness of different indicators by different disaggregation can change with location and time; the factors by which data can be stratified should be selected on the basis of the situation analysis.
PQWG Co-Chair: Matthew Day
PQWG Co-Chair: Julie March
gFSC Focal Point: Davide Rossi and Pardie Karamanoukian
