Abstract
The study is aimed at evaluating the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the food system prevailing in rural Cameroon, with particular attention to the West region. Food system sustainability is assessed in its economic, social, and environmental domains through household food supply, household food security, and household level food waste respectively. The food consumption score and food consumption nutrition quality analyses were used to measure food security. Frequency tables, cross tables and chi2 tests were applied to data collected from 600 rural households in the West region of Cameroon and it appears that the food system is economically sustainable for most rural households given that only 6.34% of households consider household food supply to be low. However, the food system is not sustainable in the social domain given that 21.17% of households are vulnerable to food insecurity and 17.83% are food insecure. The food consumption score nutrition quality analysis highlights an inadequate consumption of hem-iron, protein and vitamin A rich foods for a considerable number of households. Analysis of household food waste behaviour shows that the food system is relatively sustainable in the environmental domain given that only 1.33% of households always discard food. There are some trade-offs between the economic and environmental dimensions and between the social and environmental dimensions. Hence, measures taken to improve food system sustainability should consider the existence of such trade-offs. Keywords: Food supply, Food security, Food waste, Food system, Sustainability DOI: 10.7176/JESD/12-16-04 Publication date: August 31 st 2021
Highlights
In SSA, rural populations depend heavily on agriculture for their income (Sheehan and Barret, 2017) and a major goal of agriculture from its earliest development has been to achieve sufficient food that provides the energy and nutrients needed for a healthy, active life (IOM and NRC, 2015), but this goal is far from being attained as the current food system is unable to ensure food and nutrition security for the global population
The aim of this study is to evaluate the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the food system prevailing in rural Cameroon, with particular attention to the West region
The study shows that the food system prevailing in the West region is not sustainable in the economic, social and environmental dimensions
Summary
In SSA, rural populations depend heavily on agriculture for their income (Sheehan and Barret, 2017) and a major goal of agriculture from its earliest development has been to achieve sufficient food that provides the energy and nutrients needed for a healthy, active life (IOM and NRC, 2015), but this goal is far from being attained as the current food system is unable to ensure food and nutrition security for the global population. Five years after the world committed to ending hunger, food insecurity, and all forms of malnutrition, we are still off track to achieve this objective by 2030 (FAO et al, 2020). Because approximately 820 million people are hungry worldwide, and the level of hunger varies substantially depending on the area of the world, with the majority of them living in developing areas (FAO et al, 2019). Malnutrition in its various forms directly affects one third of the global population (Bogard et al, 2018) and the level of food insecurity varies substantially depending on the area of the world, with the majority of them living in developing areas (FAO et al, 2013; FAO et al, 2015; FAO et al, 2017; and FAO et al, 2018). The state of hunger in the world as indicated by the Global Hunger Index (GHI) remains serious (IFPRI et al, 2013, IFPRI et al, 2015; IFPRI et al, 2017; Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide, 2018) and a significant proportion of the global population still does not get enough food (Brown et al, 2014), with the greatest proportion found in developing countries
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