From food security to food wellbeing: examining food security through the lens of food wellbeing in Nepal’s rapidly changing agrarian landscape

Abstract

This paper argues that existing food security and food sovereignty approaches are inadequate to fully understand contradictory human development, nutrition, and productivity trends in Nepalese small-scale agriculture. In an attempt to bridge this gap, we developed a new food wellbeing approach that combines insights from food security, food sovereignty, and social wellbeing perspectives. We used the approach to frame 65 semi-structured interviews in a cluster of villages in Kaski district in the mid-hills of Nepal on various aspects of food security, agriculture, off-farm livelihood opportunities, and women's wellbeing. Our results indicate that contextspecific subjective and social relational factors highlighted by the food wellbeing approach are key to understanding a paradox of increased food security, yet decreasing sustainability of small-scale agriculture. Increased levels of male out-migration and opportunities for local off-farm work have increased local capacity to purchase food. The positive consequences for food security are indicated by evidence that households with non-farm income sources had better food sufficiency, absorption capacity, nutritional quality, and stability of food supply. These off-farm employment opportunities have also led to the greater involvement of low caste groups and women in small-scale agriculture. This has been empowering for both groups and led to an increase in wellbeing, particularly for those women who have become de facto heads of household. Yet, small landholdings, persistent patterns of unequal and absentee land ownership, sharecropping, women's overwork, and the aspirations of low caste farmers and women away from agriculture are simultaneously driving the erosion of local small-scale agricultural productivity and ecological sustainability.

Geographical Modeling of Spatial Interaction between Built-Up Land Sprawl and Cultivated Landscape Eco-Security under Urbanization Gradient

“…At present, scholars worldwide have made fruitful achievements in the research of built-up land sprawl and cultivated land protection but mainly focused on their own unilateral research [42]. After summarizing a large number of research results, we finally selected 12 types of driving factors that have a common impact on built-up land sprawl and cultivated land protection, and then conducted correlation analysis of these factors based on different urbanization gradients.…”

How do grassroot NGOs in rural Myanmar express their visions for the food system? Food security and food sovereignty as entangled narratives within NGO struggles and strategies

“…In recent years, the question of how agriculture, food, nutrition and human health intersect has been framed using the concepts of food security (which is concerned with the right of populations to have access to food) and food sovereignty (a more holistic conceptual framework concerned with populations' political and economic control over food systems) (Pritchard et al ., ). The debates between these frameworks have been played out in leading international journals among prominent food studies scholars (inter alia, Patel, ; Bartos, ; Bernstein, ; Blay‐Palmer et al ., ; Carolan, ; Clapp, ; Edelman, ,b; Hopma and Woods, ; Jarosz, ,b; McKeon, ; Campbell, ; McMichael, ; Wald and Hill, ; Gartaula et al ., ; Glamann et al ., ; Leventon and Laudan, ; Neilson and Wright, ). Yet despite this extensive attention, it remains unclear how these concepts are immersed within the struggles and strategies of those working at the frontline of global food poverty.…”

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“…The potential of a region for agricultural development is generally assessed from the potential of land, climate and other environmental potential. The main functions of the land are: (1) sustainably supporting biological commodity production, (2) sustainably supporting ecosystem health, (3) the terrestrial hydrological cycle chain, and (4) supporting environmental quality. This function becomes a reference in assessing the sustainability of land resource use.…”

“…Crop development in Morotai Island Regency, as an effort to fulfill local food needs, can still be done because of the land resources potential is available and not optimally utilized. Agricultural land is the main resource for rural community development and food supply [1]- [3].…”