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The purpose of this chapter is to assess the food security situation in Bangladesh based on 2011/2012 Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey data using two commonly measured food security indicators: Food Consumption Score (FCS) and Household Hunger Scale (HHS).

The dependent variable in the model is a categorical variable representing different scales of food security as obtained from the FCS and HHS indicators. These categorical variables are explained by annual remittances received by the households; the demographic characteristics (age, gender, literacy level, and occupation) of the household head; and total monthly income from agricultural and non-agricultural wages using ordered probit regression models.

Results indicated that remittances play an important role in improving the food security of households. Other significant variables in the model were income earned outside of the farm, male-operated household, and literacy. Increasing income from other than the agricultural sector significantly raises the probability of a household being food secure.

The Government of Bangladesh should make the agriculture sector stronger at all levels of the value chain. Additionally, providing income generation opportunities for households outside of the farm can be used as a diversification measure to achieve food security within the country.

Land is an emotive issue for women in Kenya, majority of who still suffer the consequences of not having access to land, leading to economic insecurity. This paper aims at examining the effects of women access to land on household nutritional outcomes among smallholder farmers in Kenya.

The study uses primary data collected from a sample of 384 small-scale women farmers selected using multi-stage sampling technique. For data analysis, household nutritional outcomes were measured using Households Dietary Diversity Scores (HDDS) and Household Hunger Scale Scores (HHS). Stratification multilevel and matching-smoothing approach that controls for pre-treatment heterogeneity bias and treatment effect heterogeneity bias was used in estimating heterogeneous effects of women access to land.

The analysis reveals that women access to land has a significant positive effect on household nutritional outcomes. All households across all propensity scores strata benefited significantly but differently from women access to land in terms of nutritional outcomes.

Econometrically, propensity matching technique used in computing heterogeneity effects captures selection bias due to observable characteristics but it fails to capture selection bias due to unobservable factors. However, robust strategies were employed to ensure minimal estimation bias.

The paper provides insights on the determinants of women access to land and the influence women access to land has on household nutritional outcomes. In addition, by employing one of the conventional impact evaluation techniques, the paper contributes to knowledge by taking into accounts the heterogeneity in the effects of women access to land on household nutritional outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to examine household food gap and food insecurity in Eastern Ethiopia. Differences in food gap and food insecurity were also examined in terms of gender of the household head and location.

A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods such as household survey, key informant interview and focused group discussion were utilized for this study. Households were drawn randomly from the study area.

In terms of food availability, more than half of the households experienced a food gap during the year, especially during the months of July and August. In terms of gender, female-headed households had more months of food shortage compared to their male counterparts. This disparity was also reflected in poorer food access among female-headed households as shown by the higher HFIAS. Differences in food insecurity were obtained in terms of gender of the household head and location. Livestock ownership, cereal crop production, extension contact and household size significantly influenced household food access.

Findings are valid only for low-land agroecologies

This study contributes to the existing literature by examining household food gap and food insecurity using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. It adds value in examining disparities between male-headed and female-headed households. Literature related to seasonal household food insecurity is limited in Ethiopia. This study contributes in this regard by examining seasonal food insecurity between post-harvest and pre-harvest seasons.

This paper assessed the causal effect of women empowerment in agriculture (WEA) on household food security in the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) zone of Ghana.

The study used the extended probit regression with endogenous treatment to account for potential endogeneity of empowerment and food security using data from the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Feed the Future baseline survey.

All three indicators of women empowerment positively impact food security. In specific terms, when women participate in crop and livestock decision-making in the household, and when they have access to cultivable lands, their households have lower probabilities of being severely or moderately hungry. Also, crop decision-making exhibits the highest impact on food security.

While there may be several policy options to eradicate food insecurity challenges in Ghana, the policy measure of empowering women in agriculture needs attention. Priority should be given to empowering them in production decision-making.

There is the need to sensitise households on the importance of women decision-making within the household and their access to land.

In the context of the empowerment literature, from our search, this study is the first in applying the hunger scale as a measure of food security and represents the first attempt at examining the effect of women empowerment on food security in Ghana.

The consequences of extreme climatic events that threaten food security have created the urgent need to properly adopt climate-smart adaptation techniques to improve productivity. The study examined the sustainability responses to climate-smart adaptation and the implication it has for explaining the food security situations among farm households in the Central Region of Ghana.

We estimated Heckit treatment effect model to analyse cross-sectional data collected from randomly selected farmers in the Central Region.

Analysis of farm sustainability index suggests that farmers' agricultural practices in response to climate change are lowly or moderately sustainable. We further found that while majority of the farm households are severely food insecure or food insecure with hunger, only about one-third are food insecure without hunger and the remaining few being food secure. The sustainability of farm practices is being impacted by the farmers’ choice of climate smart adaptation measures at the farm level. Consequently, the farm households' food security situation is found to be improved when sustainable farming practices are employed in the face of managing climate change effects.

Conclusions drawn from the study findings give rooms for policy implications that suggest responsibilities for policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders to promote CSA practices in food crop production in Ghana. These policy implications will contribute to improve crop productivity, increase incomes and thus enhance food security among farm families. Awareness campaign about benefits of CSA practices and technologies need to be strengthened among farmers in Ghana by government and NGOs that matter in promoting farm resilience to climate change. Given the important impacts of sustainable farm practices on household food security situation, policies that seek to build the adaptive capacity of farmers to climate vulnerability impacts should take into consideration the sustainability dimensions of the adaptation and mitigation measures to be advocated for use at farm levels.

Our paper contributes to literature knowledge on climate-smart adaptation practices effect on food security as evidenced in some recent literature. The paper makes a unique contribution by highlighting the food security implication of the sustainability impact of CSA practices, thereby exploring sustainability as an impact pathway between climate smart adaptations practices and food security in a developing country like Ghana. We approached our study aiming at making new contribution by introducing in the study implementation a quasi-experimental research design which future studies on impacts of climate smart adaptation practices can replicate.

This study examines the adoption drivers of scale-appropriate mechanization in Nepal's maize-based farming systems. The authors also assess the contribution of scale-appropriate mechanization to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of zero hunger (SDG2) and no poverty (SDG1).

Propensity score matching and doubly robust inverse probability-weighted regression adjusted methods were applied to estimate the effects of mini-tiller adoption. These methods control the biases that arise from observed heterogeneities between mini-tillers users and nonusers.

The study findings show that farm size, labor shortages, draft animal scarcity, market proximity, household assets and household heads' educational level influence the adoption of mechanization in Nepal. Mechanized farms exhibited enhanced maize productivity, profits and household food self-sufficiency. Reduced depth and severity of poverty were also observed. Nevertheless, these effects were not uniform; very small farms (≤0.41 ha) facing acute labor shortages benefited the most.

The study results suggest that policymakers in developing nations like Nepal may wish to expand their emphasis on scale-appropriate mechanization to improve farm productivity and household food security, reduce poverty and contribute to the SDGs.

This first-of-its-kind study establishes the causal effects between scale-appropriate farm mechanization and SDG1 (no poverty) and SDG2 (zero hunger) in a developing nation.

The nexus between sustainable agri-food production and food security outcomes of farm households in sub-Saharan Africa is attracting policy attention. This study analyzes the effects of crop diversity on the incidence of food scarcity, dietary diversity, and the sale and consumption of own crops.

The study uses panel data collected in 2015 and 2018 on a randomly selected sample of 2553 households from 49 villages in northern Ghana. The study employed a fixed effects modeling approach in the empirical analysis.

The study finds that crop diversity is positively associated with better dietary diversity, reduced hunger, lower food expenditure, and higher consumption of own produce. The results show positive effects of crop diversity on the total harvested output and sale of agricultural production. Whilst sales improved sustainable food and nutrition security by providing purchasing power to buy nutritional inputs in the market, consumption of own produce rather improved food availability by reducing food scarcity and malnutrition.

Crop diversity is one of the pathways for promoting sustainable agri-food production systems to ensure the food and nutritional security of vulnerable populations and promote biodiversity to achieve environmental goals in sub-Saharan Africa. Crop diversity reduces food expenditure and raises rural incomes through improved outputs and sales, which empowers farm households to diversify their dietary options to be able to overcome incidences of hunger and malnutrition in periods of food scarcity.

The present study improves the understanding of sustainable agri-food production through crop diversity and its implications on food and nutrition security outcomes. The panel data and fixed effects modelling approach address the endogeneity problem between crop diversity and household tastes and preferences.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze food security status and its determinants among households in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

The analysis is based on the General Household Survey which was conducted in 2014 where 3,033 households were sampled from the province. Specifically, this study examines the determinants of food security proxy by dietary diversity (24-hour recall) using descriptive statistics, Poisson regression. A frequency count of food groups consumed household dietary diversity score was used as the explained variable.

The descriptive analysis shows that, although 61.7 percent of households in the study area have a high dietary diversity score, however, food group giving micronutrients are less consumed as food groups having cereals (maize), beef, sugar and oil was mostly consumed. Results on the marginal effect of Poisson regression indicate that household head characteristics (age, gender, education, marital status, and employment status), pension receiving households and geographical location significantly influence household dietary diversity.

This study advocates for the intensification of rural development and food security programs, formal and informal education for household heads, female empowerment and dietary enlightenment for households in order to promote the consumption of diverse diets and more healthful food groups.

This study aims to highlight the impact of altruistic-self and hunger awareness on socially responsible food consumption through the lens of self-awareness and self-congruity theories due to the great challenge of Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 812 respondents. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) confirm each variable's structure through the measurement model and test the hypothesis to support a structural model.

The results highlight that the combination of altruistic-self and hunger awareness (AS-HA congruence) drives consumers to execute socially responsible food consumption. Meanwhile, consumers' food-saving attitude mediation translates to the attitude towards responsible and ethical use increasing socially responsible food consumption, a contextual development in the theory of congruence. Conversely, hunger awareness is not confirmed as significantly influencing socially responsible food consumption.

This research provides valuable insights for academicians and practitioners in developing food waste management strategies that can be implemented to reduce food wastage.

Food waste is a global concern and is challenging for many manufacturing, distribution and individual wastage levels. However, food wastage by consumers is one of the most critical problems which can be minimised with awareness and attitudinal changes in behaviour as a form of socially responsible consumption.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the socioeconomic impact on perceived household food security in the North Luwu District of South Sulawesi Province in the eastern part of Indonesia. In Indonesia, 87 million people are presently vulnerable to food insecurity. Thus, the United Nations Development Programme’s primary millennium development goal for Indonesia is to halve the number of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. It is clear that food security at the household level is crucial to achieving this target.

In total, 371 household heads were interviewed. The households’ perceptions of their food security status were captured by asking the household head the following question: “How do you perceive your household’s food security status during the last month”? Respondents could select from the following options: insecure, somewhat insecure, somewhat secure, secure and highly secure. Here, the household head’s answer is regarded as the household’s subjective food security status (SFSS). We then applied descriptive analysis and an ordered logit model to determine the socioeconomic factors that influence SFSS.

As expected, in both analyses, household income and formal level of education have a strong relationship to SFSS. However, this study finds that food nutrition knowledge also shows a significant role in enhancing the probability that household SFSS will be in a better food security category. This could be a breakthrough in improving household food security status given the lack of formal education.

Neighborhood resource-based food preparation counseling programs are essential. Existing food programs for Indonesian households should be reoriented and incorporated into the non-formal educational curriculum and should be carried out at the family level or in small groups to ensure that the message of the program is delivered effectively. In the short term, for non-farm households, the government should provide targeted households with crash programs such as revolving funds for household-level business activities. For farm households, ensuring that farming infrastructures, facilities and technologies are adequate and affordable is crucial to sustaining their production process.

This is the first study to investigate the perceptions of household heads on their food security status in Indonesia. Most prior studies on household food security in Indonesia were conducted in response to Indonesia’s 1997 economic crisis and focused predominantly on Java, in the western part of Indonesia; there is little existing research on the eastern part of Indonesia. Moreover, this study is the first to emphasize the significant role of food nutrition knowledge in increasing the probability of household heads’ perceptions on their food security status being in a better category.