Abstract
One of the great challenges in agricultural development and sustainable intensification is the assurance of social equity in food security oriented interventions. Development practitioners, researchers, and policy makers alike could benefit from prior insight into what interventions or environmental shocks might differentially affect farmers' food security status, in order to move towards more informed and equitable development. We examined the food security status and livelihood activities of 269 smallholder farm households (HHs) in Bihar, India. Proceeding with a four-step analysis, we first applied a multivariate statistical methodology to differentiate five primary farming system types. We next applied an indicator of food security in the form of HH potential food availability (PFA), and examined the contribution of crop, livestock, and on- and off-farm income generation to PFA within each farm HH type. Lastly, we applied scenario analysis to examine the potential impact of the adoption of ‘climate smart’ agricultural (CSA) practices in the form of conservation agriculture (CA) and improved livestock husbandry, and environmental shocks on HH PFA. Our results indicate that compared to livestock interventions, CA may hold considerable potential to boost HH PFA, though primarily for wealthier and medium-scale cereal farmers. These farm HH types were however considerably more vulnerable to food insecurity risks resulting from simulated drought, while part-time farmers and resource-poor agricultural laborers generating income from off-farm pursuits were comparatively less vulnerable, due in part to their more diversified income sources and potential to migrate in search of work. Our results underscore the importance of prior planning for development initiatives aimed at increasing smallholder food security while maintaining social equity, while providing a robust methodology to vet the implications of agricultural interventions on an ex ante basis.
Highlights
The global diversity of smallholder farming systems and associated livelihood strategies reflects the intrinsic interaction of social-ecological processes and factors at different organizational levels
Of the 32 variables measured in surveys, scree plots of the Eigen values resulting from the principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that the diversity in farm household characteristics was associated with three principal components (PC), together explaining 30% of the variability (Fig. 3A)
The first two PCs spread out farm households in terms of the number of crops grown, the percentage of land dedicated to wheat in the dry season, the percentage of land dedicated to rice, and the proportion and importance of crop products sold for income generation
Summary
The global diversity of smallholder farming systems and associated livelihood strategies reflects the intrinsic interaction of social-ecological processes and factors at different organizational levels. Proper characterization of this diversity is an important step towards delineating the appropriate social-ecological niche for different technological and policy options (Descheemaeker et al, 2016; Ojiem et al, 2006). When combined with geographic analysis, recommendation domains for agronomic technologies, management practices, and farming systems can be developed, with the ultimate goal of increasing the efficiency of development efforts by accelerating smallholder farmers' adaptation and adoption of productivity increasing technology products (Sumberg and Reese, 2004). Grouping farming systems in terms of their resources and livelihood activities, as well as agricultural management practices, is common. Farming system typologies have been used for nearly two decades to capture the diversity of farming systems (Landais, 1998), and are increasingly used to provide guidelines for the development of agricultural innovations and to better understand their implications for climate change (Berre et al, 2016; Chopin et al, 2015; Douxchamps et al, 2015; Kuivanen et al, 2016; Pacini et al, 2014; Tittonell, 2014)
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