Household Food Security And Food Choices

Term Paper:

Household Food Security & Food Choices

Word count

Table of Content

Title Page #

Introduction 3

Method

Results

Discussion

Conclusion 12

References 12

Introduction

Food security is defined when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for a healthy and active life (World Food Summit, 1996). Household food security is the application of this concept at the household level.

Households who have guaranteed access to sufficient food throughout the year are considered food secure. Household food security requires adequate home production of food and adequate economic and physical access to food. This economic access refers to the purchasing power of the household, where as physical access relates to the closeness to markets and distribution channels were food are acquired.

The concept of food access is the households’ ability to regularly acquire adequate amounts of food through a combination of their own production (crops and livestock) and purchases made in the marketplace. Own production depends the availability of inputs such as seeds, agrochemical, assets of household (land, equipment) and cash to purchase other inputs. Food purchases depend on cash income, prices and other competing important expenditures such as health care, utilities, shelter, non-food needs, education and repayments of debt by the household. Cash income may come from the sale of grown crops, paid employment, part time labour and cash received from social networks.

Food utilization refers to the households’ use of the food to which they have acquired.

Food consumption is the food that is actually consumed by the households and its ...

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... that the household members stated that Health properties, energy content and environmental, political and religious variables had no influences on the household’s food choices.

Conclusion

There are many influences on food choice for a rural household. The household agricultural output contributes to household food security by providing them with direct access to food they that can harvested, cook and fed their family members. Since the households income are from the sale of produce grown and other employment activities the family is relatively food secure during certain periods. They may be vulnerable if their agriculture production is negatively affect since it largely contributes to the overall household income level. The food choices made by this households seeks to maximize their utility with whatever income constraint exist.