Chapter 3


 The concept of food insecurity should also include the notion of vulnerability. Where
households' access to food is adequate at the margin, but they have very few assets as a
 cushion against any food shock, then they should be considered chronically food insecure.
 This is difficult to measure at any degree of aggregation, and this broader concept can
 probably only be applied effectively at a micro-level.

 Chronic food insecurity is almost always closely associated with poverty, and responses to
 the problem will usually require an injection of external resources. At a household and
 regional level, this could mean the introduction of targeted programmes, as will be discussed
 in Chapter 5. When a whole country appears to be food insecure, this can be seen as a
 reflection of the country's economic assets relative to its population, the distribution of those
 assets amongst the population or the overall governance of the economy. It is unduly
 pessimistic to assume that a poor asset base dooms a cntrto food insecurity. Japan. one
 of the world's most successful economies has a poor natural resource base, but has developed
 largely on the basis of its skilled labour force. The problem is more likely to stem from poor
 policy, both in the food sector and more generally, sometimes compounded by civil war. In
 these cases, a successful attack on chronic food insecurity may require a change in both
 political priorities and overall economic policy.

 4.2 Seasonal and cyclical food insecurity

 Seasonal food insecurity is the outcome of regular patterns usually in weather related
 activity. The most obvious is the crop production cycle, which affects levels of output.
 market prices for the output and agricultural employment opportunities. However, there are
 other aspects of economic activity which may have a strong seasonal element. Employment
 in the tourist industry and in crop and livestock processing may have a strong seasonal
 element. In countries with marked rainy seasons, construction work can have a strong
 seasonal component. All these factors can result in seasonal food insecurity as the source and
 size of food entitlements vary over the year.

 Seasonal variations in income, production and food prices need not cause problems of food
 insecurity, if individuals and households have the ability to even out the incoming flows by
 storing or saving on an intra-annual basis. These variations are not usually seen as problems
 for a region or a country as a whole, but for the poorer individuals within the country. The
 underlying problem may be one of inadequate entitlement for the year as a whole, in other
 words hbronic foon inecurity manifesting itself as seasonal food insecurity. Often in
 agricultural households, this may be compounded by problems of indebtedness. It is not
 uncommon for agricultural households to build up debts during the growing season which
 have to be repaid immediately after harvest, when output prices are at their lowest. In some
 countries in south Asia. the problem is compounded by the interlinking of credit and output
 markets. The farmer borrows from a merchant and is required to pay back in grain valued at
 the merchant's prices. Again, the underlying problem is one of poverty, manifesting itself in
 insufficient resources to see the household through the year.

 Seasonal food insecurity can be identified by measuring food consumption at different
 periods of the year. Seasonal variation in malnutrition can also occur, but these are often the