Measuring Household Food Security: A Participatory Process Approach

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Abstract
Ingrid Nyborg and Ruth Haug: ‘Measuring Household Food Security: A Participatory Process Approach’, Forum for Development Studies, 1995:1, pp. 29–59. The meaning of food security has changed significantly in recent years, making it difficult for development agents to adequately address the issue in projects, even when it appears as a major goal. The authors, in an attempt to clarify the concept, provide a comprehensive overview of the current theories of food security. Two main schools of thought are identified; the conventional school supporting a deficit model of food requirements where food system supply deficits are translated directly into a decline in nutritional status, and an alternative school focusing on a poverty or an entitlement failure model, which sees food insecurity as a socio-economic process with complex local responses and coping mechanisms. The alternative school recognises the inherent interdisciplinarity of the food security concept. The article thus proceeeds from theory to practice, where the challenge of choosing indicators to measure food security is addressed. Due to the location and situation-specificity of responses to food insecurity, participatory methods are suggested for defining indicators for measuring food security status, as well as for measuring the impact of development activities on household food security.