Chapter 3


Figure 3.4

 Responses to Household Food Shortage








 l i Crops and Livestock Adjustment
 -- Diet Change
 Famine Food Use
 Grain loan from kin

 Labour sales (migration)

 1. Small animal sales

 Sr Cash/cereal loan
 from merchants

 \
 \Productive asset sales

 Farmland pledging

 i Farmland sale

 S \Outmigration



 Time






 In developing approaches to famine prevention and the mitigation of the effects of food
 shocks, it is important to recognize that these food shocks are not simply a function of
 production and market failures, but may also result from institutional and policy failures.
 There is a need to strengthen responses in this area. Food crises are usually not simple 'acts
 of God, but the result of long sequences of e here human decisions have played an
 important part. Humans are not the passive recipients o-food crises, and institutional
 structures must be developed which allow them to respond more effectively to the situations
 they find themselves in.


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