Chapter 5


ETB per quintal in surplus producing areas of the country and transport costs into the Ogaden
region of 160 ETB per quintal (GTZ 1993, op.cit.).

In general, emergency food assistance has the advantage of assuring direct access to food.
The effectiveness of disaster relief operations depends primarily on whether assistance is
provided in time and volume according to need which, again, requires an institutional
mechanism to identify the needy persons and to distribute the relief commodities directly to
them. Also here, the administrative overhead costs to ensure precise targeting have to be
weighed against the implicit costs of leakage.

2) Special/supplementary feeding programmes

Special feeding programmes have been implemented in many developing countries. They are
most effective when targeted to high risk individuals, such as children, pregnant and nursing
mothers, old and sick people.

In general, special feeding programmes are administratively intensive in terms of screening
and reaching the eligible people, and they require a certain level of infrastructure and
logistical support for their successful implementation. Often existing institutions such as
health centres or schools are used as a distribution network. Sometimes special food
distribution or feeding centres need to be established. The food may be distributed as take-
home rations or provided as wet-feeding on site. In the latter case, the administrative costs are
relatively high but targeting is most effectively achieved, as leakages caused by intra-family
sharing and selling of food is reduced. An evaluation of supplementary feeding programmes
in five countries found that in on-site feeding, mothers reported 79-86 percent of the children
ate the ration compared to only 50 percent under the take-home programme. One project
showed that the increase in the weight-for-age of pre-schoolers who participated in on-site
feeding was significantly greater than that of children who were enrolled in a take-home
programme (FAO 1988, op.cit.).

If the whole family is, however, poor and exposed to food insecurity, certain leakage to other
family members may be acceptable and considered as effective, as the feeding programme
will have nutritional benefits for the other household members, too, and increase overall
household income. There are further potential benefits of feeding programmes. School
feeding programmes can provide an effective channel for distributing food to children of low-
income families and an incentive for such families to send their children to school. This cab
contribute to increase school enrolment and attendance among school-age children. Such
programmes will, of course, be less effective or ineffective if the majority of the school
children come from relatively better-off families, if the poorest families do not send their
children to school, or if the crucial nutritional deficiencies are in under school-age children.
In the latter case, health care or special mother and child care centres may be an appropriate
channel to reach the target group.

4. The Impact Paths of Policies to Improve Food Security an Overview

Fig. 5.7 presents a concise view of the impacts of the food policy interventions discussed in
the previous sections. The Figure is based on the framework of macro-meso-micro linkages


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