Constraint To Food Production Research Articles

Guest Editors’ Introduction: The role of policy in reducing malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African countries experience various market failures and other constraints in food production, marketing, and food consumption. Consequently, sub-Saharan Africa governments have put in place a myriad of policies to counter these failures. Agricultural, food and nutrition policies address nutrition outcomes, such as hunger, undernourishment, wasting, stunting, child mortality, inadequate food consumption, food insecurity, and volatile food prices, thus improve nutrition outcomes among the population. However, malnutrition persists among the population in the region. To mitigate this challenge, informed, evidence-based policy development and implementation by policy practitioners is of essence. The solutions to the double burden of undernutrition and obesity cut across the agriculture, rural development, and public health sectors. This essay introduces twenty papers of this Special Issue of the Food Policy journal which analyzes 8 policy domains, contributes to the debate on the linkages and pathways through which policies influence food security, nutrition outcomes, and related indicators and points to policy directions in these domains.

Climate resilient technological interventions to ensure food security in flood affected area – An experience from NICRA village, Dhubri, Assam

The study was conducted in villages of Dhubri district in Assam under National Innovation on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project implemented by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Dhubri during 2013 to 2015. The villages are situated under Bilasipara sub-division in the district ‘Dhubri’ of Assam, India on 26° 15. 425´ to 26° 16.570´ N latitude and 90° 14.034´ to 90° 18.040´ E longitude at an elevation of 128 ft from mean sea level. Recurrent floods has been the principal constraints in food production in these villages affecting mainly winter ( Kharif ) rice during the growing season as well as summer rice ( Boro and Ahu ) at the time of maturity. The prevailing weather patterns of the area were observed to have a strong bearing on the occurrence, intensity and magnitude of floods. About 71 per cent of total rainfall occurs during monsoon period (June to September), the winter being virtually dry leaving little scope for growing any Rabi crop. To ensure rice production to climatic variability leading to flood, site specific climate resilient technologies such as staggered planting rice variety ‘Gitesh’, flood escaping, short duration HYV rice ‘Luit’ for post and pre-flood situation, submergence tolerant rice variety ‘Swarna Sub 1’ and mid duration HYV of rice ‘Joymati’ during preflood situation were tested and demonstrated in the project villages. It was necessary to observe the performance of these varieties to the climatic vulnerability as well as farmer’s acceptability. The average yield of the rice variety ‘Gitesh’ (45 days aged seedlings), ‘Luit’ (post flood situation), ‘Luit’ (pre-flood situation), ‘Swarna Sub 1’ and ‘Jomati’ were found to be 40 to 42, 26.3 to 36, 23.35 to 31.39, 33 to 45 and 42.37 to 50.76 q per hectare, respectively. As a result of the study and demonstration to endure recurrent flood and climatic variability, the newly introduced winter rice varieties, Gitesh has spread over the highest area in the project villages (90.00%) followed by ‘Swarna Sub 1’ (75.00 %) and ‘Luit’ (66.67 %) due to flexibility in seedling age facilitating delayed transplanting, submergence tolerance upto 14 days and allowance for transplanting after recession of flood, respectively.

The spatial aggregation of organic farming in England and its underlying environmental correlates

Summary 1 Given the current debate on the global food crisis, conservation in Europe is expected to shift from maximizing biodiversity at the expense of yield to conserving biodiversity under food production constraints. Organic farming is potentially of great importance for environmentally sustainable farming. Understanding the distribution of organic farms and the environmental, social and cultural correlates is necessary to predict the way in which this may change over time. 2 We collated data from 30 variables describing the topography, climate, soils, farm size/type, human population characteristics and farm business in the English agricultural landscape. Factor analysis reduced these variables to six orthogonal axes, which describe the suitability of land for arable farming, the degree of ruralization (distance to urban centres and population density), the farm size and type, the soil hydrology and texture, and the amount of woodland (forestry). 3 An analysis of the distribution of organic farms showed that they are spatially aggregated at the regional and neighbourhood scales and that their presence in a 10 × 10-km grid square can be predicted from the farm size/type. 4 Analysis of the concentration of organic farms showed that about a third of the variance in their occurrence across the country can be predicted by a statistical model including the six landscape axes and a term to account for spatial aggregation. 5 Synthesis and applications. Our results show that a combination of environmental variables associated with a lower agricultural potential predisposes farmers to convert to organic farming, which further promotes conversion of farmers in the neighbourhood. Organic farming as a ‘wildlife friendly’ method is more likely to occur in agriculturally less-favoured areas where economic incentives for conversion to organic farming do not need to be high and the loss of production due to conversion will be comparatively small. This suggests that an efficient conservation strategy, which takes the global demand for food into account, would be to promote organic farming as an agri-environment scheme in landscapes that are already rich in organic farms at the expense of those existing high-production landscapes that are not.

Food Security in the Sudan

The Sudan, with an area of one million square miles has a population of 26 million people, an annual GNP growth rate of 1 percent, and an inflation rate of over 70 percent. The country is heterogeneous in many respects including climate, geography, history, languages, and people. Eighty-five percent of the labor force is in the agricultural sector and agriculture contributes 30 percent to GNP. Ninety percent of the exports are agricultural raw materials that include: cotton, livestock, sesame, groundnuts, and gum arabic. Despite these exports, the country faces an acute balance of payment deficits, large budget deficits, and government expenditures. Sudan's external debt rose from $ 3.8 billion in 1978 to $ 13.5 billion in 1990. The depth of poverty determines the impact of the famine. The effects of food shortages, and purchasing power collapse are not felt in higher income groups with good asset bases. The poor face long-term constraints in food production, access to education, health care, markets, credit, improved inputs, and information. Over half a million people have died between 1984 and 1990 due to starvation. The situation is worse in