An application of the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale to assess food security in rural communities of Nepal

Abstract

The state of food (in)security in rural communities of different ecological zones of the Kaligandaki Basin, Nepal, is assessed using a Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). The data were collected from 360 households using face-to-face interviews. The results show poor availability of food from subsistence production in the Middle-Mountains and Trans-Himalaya, whereas most households with sufficient purchasing power are able to access additional food from the market. Net food security is poor, with the highest level of insecurity in the Middle-Mountains, followed by the Trans-Himalaya and the Tarai. Although weaknesses were found in application of the HFIAS method due to respondent bias in subjective assessments of food insecurity in producer-consumer rural households, the method was found to be effective for rapidly incorporating utilization and stability elements into appraisals. Although not comprehensive, this approach has the potential to complement other forms of knowledge for designing targeted food policy in Nepal. ---This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Agricultural adaptation to climate change in the trans-Himalaya: a study of Loba Community of Lo-manthang, Upper Mustang, Nepal

“…The climate change has challenged traditional indigenous knowledge of agricultural practices and understanding of weather patterns that are making agricultural strategies fail (Manandhar et al 2011;Pandey 2016b). Such a phenomenon has challenged the food and livelihood security of the people, consistent with other findings such as Pandey and Bardsley (2019). There are several rivers and rivulets, the tributaries of Kaligandaki River -Chhoser Khola, Karak Khola, and Chhorok drokpo, which provide water for irrigation in Lo-manthang.…”

“…The rate of change in the climate system inhibits spatial and seasonal characteristics (Pandey 2016a) that partially fueled to climate skeptics (Kaufmann et al 2017). The impacts are also variable across the social-ecological systems because of differential exposure to the rate of change, level of sensitivity of the systems, and adaptive capacity of an ecological system to the drivers of change (Pandey and Bardsley 2019). The climate system of the Himalaya is changing faster than that of the global average, and in the variable rates within the region (Pandey 2016a; Pandey 2016b; Shrestha et al 2012;Wester et al 2019).…”

Do changes in women's household status in Nepal improve access to food and nutrition?

“…However, that data are not longitudinal, so more research is needed into pathways of food insecurity in these communities over time. It is also important to consider seasonality when interpreting food security trends (Broaddus‐Shea et al, 2018 ; R. Pandey & Bardsley, 2019 ), however, our data do not find clear evidence of food security trends being associated with seasonality (Rounds 1 and 3 were collected in the late winter/early spring and Rounds 2 and 4 in the late summer/early fall).…”

Using mobile phone data helps estimate community-level food insecurity: Findings from a multi-year panel study in Nepal

“…There are significant variations among these three regions in terms of climate, biogeography, resources, infrastructure and socioeconomic development. The variation in food security in Nepal by agro-ecological region has been well documented [ 26 , 27 ], therefore, we included a variable for the agro-ecological region.…”