Diet diversity in pastoral and agro-pastoral households in Ugandan rangeland ecosystems

We explore how diet diversity differs with agricultural seasons and between households within pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihood systems, using variety of foods consumed as a less complex proxy indicator of food insecurity than benchmark indicators like anthropometry and serum nutrients. The study was in the central part of the rangelands in Uganda. Seventy nine households were monitored for three seasons, and eight food groups consumed during a 24 hour diet recall period used to create a household diet diversity score (HDDS). Mean HDDS was 3.2, varied significantly with gender, age, livelihood system and season (p < .001, F = 15.04), but not with household size or household head’s education level. Agro-pastoralists exhibited lower mean diet diversity than pastoralists (p < .01, F = 7.84) and among agro-pastoralists, households headed by persons over 65 years were most vulnerable (mean HDDS 2.1). This exploratory study raises issues requiring further investigation to inform policies on nutrition security in the two communities

Production and consumption responses to policy interventions in Tanzania's dairy industry

The study uses a partial equilibrium model of Tanzania’s informal dairy value chain to determine the benefits to milk producers and consumers from three policy interventions proposed in the Tanzania Livestock Modernization Initiative (TLMI). Using aggregate time series data to simulate the model, the study finds that from an individual policy perspective, expanding the national herd would produce the largest benefits for producers and consumers; producers would gain over 550 million shillings annually and consumers would gain about 35 shillings per capita. Comparing the other two interventions, consumers would benefit more from a better regulatory environment than from a reduction in cow prices, while producers would benefit more from a reduction in cow prices than from better regulations. If all policies are implemented simultaneously, even greater benefits would be realised; consumer surplus would increase by 85 shillings annually and producer surplus would increase by over one billion shillings in real terms. The results suggest that policy interventions outlined in the TLMI that address supply constraints are critical to developing the country’s dairy industry

Food security in Kenya: Insights from a household food demand model

This paper evaluates the household food security situation in Kenya in terms of access to food. We apply a quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) model to nationally representative household survey data from Kenya, and estimate and interpret price and expenditure elasticities as indicators of household sensitivity to market shocks. Our estimation results show positive expenditure elasticities, close to unity, while all compensated and uncompensated own-price elasticities are negative and smaller in magnitude. A complementary welfare analysis shows high compensated variations in the long run, ranging between 34% and 131% across food groups. This suggests that rising relative food costs have led to deterioration of the food security situation in Kenya, and the most severely affected households seem to be those that rely on informal markets and reside in rural areas. To improve food security, targeted income support could be a more effective policy than price support, given the much higher estimated expenditure elasticities