Chapter 3


 There is another type of shock, which may initially lead to similar responses as drought.
 However, here the situation does not revert to normal in the next time period and the
 household rapidly descends into chronic food insecurity. This is the effect of shocks such as
 asset loss, for example the death of livestock, war, theft and civil conflict, and more recently
 the onset of AIDS.

 The impact of a sudden shock will also vary according to the context within which the shock
 takes place. A single year famine which occurs after a bumper crop year will have eaL ery
9 different effect on food insecurity from a famine which occurs after a few years of rather
 poor harvests.

 Since the early 1980s, there has been considerable analysis of response to famines and food
 shocks (famine is differentiated from a temporary food shock insofar as individual
 households can experience transitory food insecurity in isolation, because of illness, or
 localised pest attacks, whereas a famine is a food shock which affects a considerable
 proportion of the population in a locality.) Much recent work has put considerable emphasis
 on coping strategies, or short-term responses to famine. Initially it was believed that a
 general sequence of responses could be identified, on the basis of the severity of food stress
 which the household was suffering. It is now acknowledged that coping responses are rather
 more complex than this, but it may still be useful to categorise responses into broad
 groupings. One suggested typology is insurance mechanisms, the disposal of productive
 assets and destitution.

 Figure 3.4 shows a stylised representation of a sequence of responses to a food shock, based
 on a study undertaken amongst the Hausa in Nigeria. The first six responses, crop and
 livestock adjustments, diet change, famine food use, grain loans from kin, migration and
 smallstock sales, could be categorized as insurance responses. The next four are various
 forms of disposal of productive asset and the final response, outmigration, is indicative of
 destitution. Box 3.5 contains a more detailed description of the coping strategies of an
 individual farm household in Ghana.

 The term, coping strategies, can be misleading as it implies that households are. in fact.
 ij e coping, whereas often the strategies employed are not sustainable. After a short period.
 transitory food insecurity turns into chronic food insecurity. For this reason, care has to be
 taken in using information on coping strategies to inform policy and programme decisions. It
 has been suggested that it is better to reinforce household coping strategies in famines rather
 than implement top-down approaches such as emergency public works programmes, or
 feeding programmes. Whereas a grassroots approach may well prove more fruitful in
 addressing issues of short-term famine relief than conventional relief programmes, the
 emphasis should be on increasing the options open to households.