JOURNAL ARTICLES

Water insecurity is associated with greater food insecurity and lower dietary diversity: Panel data from sub-Saharan Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic

There is growing recognition that water insecurity – the inability to reliably access sufficient water for all household uses – is commonly experienced globally and has myriad adverse consequences for human well-being. The role of water insecurity in food insecurity and diet quality, however, has received minimal attention. Data are from panel surveys conducted during 2020–21 among adults involved in smallholder agriculture in Niger (n = 364, 3 rounds), Nigeria (n = 501, 5 rounds), Senegal (n = 501, 5 rounds), and Ghana (n = 543, 5 rounds). We hypothesized that household water insecurity (measured using the brief Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale) would be associated with greater individual food insecurity (using 5 of the 8 Food Insecurity Experiences Scale items) and lower dietary diversity (using the Minimum Dietary Diversity Score for Women). At baseline, 37.1% of individuals were living in water-insecure households and of these, 90.6% had some experience of food insecurity. In multilevel mixed-effects regressions, individuals living in water-insecure households had 1.67 (95% CI: 1.47, 1.89) times higher odds of reporting any food insecurity experience and were estimated to consume 0.38-fewer food groups (95% CI: -0.50, -0.27) than those living in water-secure households. Experiences with suboptimal water access and use are associated with poor nutrition. The pathways by which water insecurity impacts nutrition should be identified. Global and national food and nutrition security policies could be strengthened by monitoring and developing strategies to address household water insecurity.

To ease the world food crisis, focus resources on women and girls

Sex-disaggregated agricultural extension and weather variability in Africa south of the Sahara

Climate change and extreme weather shocks pose serious threats to a number of agricultural outcomes, including agricultural production, productivity, and income, especially when households depend heavily on this activity. Agricultural extension and rural advisory services are key instruments in promoting technical change, advancing agricultural productivity growth and, ultimately, improving farm livelihoods, and are expected to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and extreme weather shocks. Their mitigation effects, however, may vary depending on the sex of the recipient. This paper investigates the role of sex-disaggregated agricultural extension recipients in contexts where agricultural performance of farm households is affected by weather variability. To this aim, we match multiple rounds of panel microdata from the nationally representative, consumption-based Living Standards Measurement Study -Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), collected in four sub-Saharan African countries, with remote sensing data on biophysical dimensions over a long-term horizon as well as year-specific weather shocks. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a micro-level dataset with individual-level information on agricultural extension services’ recipients has been assembled and examined to investigate the effects of extreme weather shocks and climate change. Applying panel data econometric estimators, the study finds that agricultural extension and advisory services translate into higher agricultural performance of farm households where women are also among the beneficiaries, as compared to non-beneficiaries and households where beneficiaries are men only. Moreover, these services can mitigate the negative effects of weather variability and climate change, controlling for country and time fixed effects as well as holding all other variables constant. These results call for national and international policies and interventions strengthening rural advisory services, especially targeted to women in settings where household livelihoods are predominantly agriculture-based and weather variability and shocks are expected to negatively affect farming activities.

Re-examining the effects of drought on intimate-partner violence

Droughts are associated with several societal ills, especially in developing economies that rely on rainfed agriculture. Recently, researchers have begun to examine the effect of droughts on the risk of Intimate-Partner Violence (IPV), but so far this work has led to inconclusive results. For example, two large recent studies analyzed comparable data from multiple sub-Saharan African countries and drew opposite conclusions. We attempt to resolve this apparent paradox by replicating previous analyses with the largest data set yet assembled to study drought and IPV. Integrating the methods of previous studies and taking particular care to control for spatial autocorrelation, we find little association between drought and most forms of IPV, although we do find evidence of associations between drought and women’s partners exhibiting controlling behaviors. Moreover, we do not find significant heterogeneous effects based on wealth, employment, household drinking water sources, or urban-rural locality.

The heat never bothered me anyway: Gender‐specific response of agricultural labor to climatic shocks in Tanzania

Agricultural production in Africa is generally highly labor intensive with gender‐specific specialization across activities. Using panel data from Tanzania, we examine the effects of heat stress (temperature above 29°C) during the maize‐growing season on gender‐disaggregated agricultural labor use. Results show that heat stress reduces total male family labor but does not statistically affect female family labor. Households with only female adults seem to increase their labor supply under heat stress. Given these heterogeneous effects, gender‐sensitive development interventions and adaptation strategies are suggested to enhance women's adaptive capacity.

Women's access to agriculture extension amidst COVID-19: Insights from Gujarat, India and Dang, Nepal

COVID-19 induced lockdowns have had far reaching impacts on the rural sector, particularly on women farmers. These impacts have been exacerbated by lack of access to reliable and timely agriculture information. Using panel phone survey data from India and Nepal, we study how women's access to agricultural extension was impacted by the lockdowns and its effect on agricultural productivity. We find that women's already low access to formal extension was reduced further, leading to an increased reliance on informal social networks. In both countries, nearly 50% farmers reported negative impacts on productivity due to inaccessibility of information during the lockdown. In India, we find that access to formal extension is mediated by crop type, geographic location and caste identity. We discuss ways in which extension systems in India and Nepal can be made more inclusive and resilient to future crisis, including by adapting group and community-based approaches to post-pandemic best practices.

Women’s empowerment and farmland allocations in Bangladesh: Evidence of a possible pathway to crop diversification

Climate change will likely affect several of the dimensions that determine people’s food security status in Bangladesh, from crop production to the availability and accessibility of food products. Crop diversification is a form of adaptation to climate change that reduces exposure to climate-related risks and has also been shown to increase diet diversity, reduce micronutrient deficiencies, and positively affect agro-ecological systems. Despite these benefits, the level of crop diversification in Bangladesh remains extremely low, requiring an examination of the factors that support uptake of this practice. This paper explores whether women’s empowerment, measured using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), leads to increased diversification in the use of farmland. Our results reveal that some aspects of women’s empowerment in agriculture, but not all, lead to more diversification and to a transition from cereal production to other crops like vegetables and fruits. These findings suggest a possible pathway for gender-sensitive interventions that promote crop diversity as a risk management tool and as a way to improve the availability of nutritious crops.

The role of risk in the context of climate change, land use choices and crop production: Evidence from Zambia

Most of the studies that investigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture have concentrated on the effects of changes in mean temperature and precipitation even though the importance of volatility and risk on farmers’ decision making is well documented. This study examines the empirical importance of the effects of risk associated with the impacts of climate change on farm land allocations and consequent effects on agricultural output in Zambia. We used a discrete-choice model consistent with a mean-variance utility function to model farm-level land allocations among alternative crops. Results indicate that risk-reducing decisions can reinforce crop shifts driven by climate change impacts on mean temperature and precipitation. While an analysis of the available per-capita daily nutrients reveals that farmers’ crop allocation choices can mitigate the negative effects of climate change, the opportunity cost of these decisions is explored through a simulation scenario in which yield variability is reduced to zero. Reduction of yield variability leads to land allocations that result in a sizable increase in total crop production and a significant increase in available per capita daily calories. Important conclusions can be derived from this analysis. First, the risk environment matters and should not be ignored. When the economic effects of climate change are considered, decision making under uncertainty and risk should be at the forefront of the problems that need to be addressed. Second, concentrating on farm-level effects of responses to climate change is not sufficient. To understand the economy-wide consequences of climate change, the aggregate effects of individual decisions should be assessed. Third, results indicate that increased efforts in risk management and in developing policies aimed at reducing risk can lead to significant positive outcomes for the nutritional status of low-income, food-insecure populations.

Hunger, nutrition, and precipitation: Evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh

Changing precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries. However, the linkages between the duration and severity of precipitation shocks and their effects on child nutrition and household food security metrics remain underexplored. In this study, we used Feed the Future datasets from Ghana and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on nutrition, measured by children’s height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores, and food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale. We used a spatial error regression to control for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, and we found an association between precipitation shocks and household hunger in both Ghana and Bangladesh, as well as an association between higher rainfall and worse child nutrition in Ghana.