Developing a resilience indicator for food security monitoring and evaluation : index construction and household classification for six African countries

The objective of the study was to develop an indicator of household resilience as a measure of progress towards achieving the first of four elements identified in the Framework for African Food Security. A review of the literature provided support for the use of assets owned by a household as an indicator of household resilience. Several methods of constructing household asset indices emerged from the literature reviewed. The application of four of these methods to Demographic and Health Survey data from six African countries is presented in this paper. The resulting indices were used to estimate individual socio-economic status scores for all households. All four methods performed similarly across the assessment characteristics, but yielded different results when the households were grouped into quintiles based on the estimated socio-economic status scores. As suggested by the literature, quintiles were used to classify the study households into categories of socio-economic status based on the estimated socio-economic status scores. However, socio-economic status was not evenly distributed across the study households making the use of a quintile approach inappropriate for grouping the households. Cluster analysis was applied as an alternative to the quintile classification to group the study households. Cluster analysis appeared to be a more effective approach to grouping households, both in that it does not assume an even distribution of socio-economic status across households – as the quintile approach does – and it provides a useful indication of changes in the per cent of households falling into different socio-economic status groups over time.National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africahttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ragr202015-10-31hb201

Household food security monitoring and evaluation using a resilience indicator : an application of categorical principal component analysis and simple sum of assets in five African countries

Recent global and African food crises have raised the importance of resilience as a determinant of the ability of households to cope with shocks and stresses that affect food security. This article sets out to develop a measure for resilience to provide a concise tool for measuring and monitoring food security in comparative ways across countries. It presents the results of the development of a resilience score tested using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) household data for five African countries from two different time periods per country. Cluster analysis was used to classify households into socio-economic groups. The first index used Categorical Principal Component Analysis (CATPCA) and the second a simple sum of assets. Both indices were able to detect changes in household socio-economic status over the data periods in all five countries. However, the results for the two indices were not always consistent. The simple sum method results matched the published national Millennium Development Goal data more closely than the Categorical Principal Component Analysis method. The simple sum of assets has potential as an impact indictor for development programmes aimed at improving household food security and as a national to Millennium Development Goal indicator. It provides a simple tool for tracking resilience from data that is routinely collected through multiple in-country surveys and available from national statistics.National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africahttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ragr202015-02-28hb201

TESTING THE EFFICIENCY OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN FUTURES MARKET FOR WHITE MAIZE

Cointegration analysis is used to test whether the South African futures market for white maize was efficient (futures prices predict spot (cash) prices that reflect all publicly available information) in 1997 and 1998. Tests are also conducted to assess whether or not white maize futures prices are unbiased predictors of future spot prices (for effective price discovery). There was no long-run relationship between white maize futures and spot prices for 1997, but there is evidence of a long-run relationship between these price series in 1998. Furthermore, the 1998 futures price was an unbiased predictor of future spot prices for both the annual and three-month contract. This could be evidence of a market learning process and a progression towards efficiency, which has seen a marked increase in market liquidity (contract volumes traded) since late 1996

USE OF MAIZE MARKETING ALTERNATIVES AND PRICE RISK MANAGEMENT TOOLS BY COMMERCIAL MAIZE FARMERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

The demise of the Maize Board in South Africa in 1997 placed responsibility for maize marketing in the hands of individual producers. Given the inelastic nature of maize supply and demand, these farmers now face considerable price risk. In the absence of the Maize Board, price risk management mechanisms have evolved to serve maize farmers. Results of a postal survey of commercial maize producers in 1998 indicate that maize farmers are making increased use of the forward contracting market relative to the spot market. The percentage of respondents using SAFEX increased markedly over a three-year period, the hedging ratio rising from 27 percent in 1997/98 to reach 49 percent for 1998/99 and 1999/2000. Survey respondents were divided into lower- and higher- level users of price risk management tools, based on their scores for an index of price risk management. Higher-level users tended to operate larger farms, and be younger, less experienced, but more educated, computeradopting operators who were less likely to individually own their operations. Farmers perceived their marketing management skills to be relatively weak. Maize marketing education seminars and magazine articles explaining available marketing alternatives could increase farmers’ use of price risk management tools. Further research opportunities lie in the estimation of optimal hedging ratios in a South African context and the monitoring of farmers’ marketing activities as the maize market matures

Management of non-timber forestry products extraction: Local institutions, ecological knowledge and market structure in South-Eastern Zimbabwe

Common-pool resources (CPRs), such as forests, water resources and rangelands, provide a wide variety of economic benefits to forest-fringe dwellers in semi-arid areas of southern Africa. However, the public nature and competition involved in the use of these goods, and weak enforcement of institutional arrangements governing their use may lead to resource degradation. Using survey data from four communities in south-eastern Zimbabwe for 2008 and 2009, this paper examines the extent to which forest degradation is driven by existing common property management regimes resource and user characteristics, ecological knowledge and marketing structure. A Principal Component Analysis indicates that the existence of agreed-upon rules governing usage (including costs of usage), enforcement of these rules, sanctions for rule violations that are proportional to the severity of rule violation, social homogeneity, and strong beliefs in ancestral spirits were the most important attributes determining effectiveness of local institutions in the management of CPRs. Empirical results from a regression analysis showed that resource scarcity, market integration, and infrastructural development lead to greater resource degradation, while livestock income, high ecological knowledge, older households, and effective local institutional management of the commons reduce resource degradation. The results suggest that there is need for adaptive local management systems that enhance ecological knowledge of users and regulates market structure to favour long-term livelihood securities of these forest-fringe communities.Common-pool resources Principal component analysis Institutions Forest degradation

Factors influencing the use of alternative land cultivation technologies in Swaziland: implications for smallholder farming on customary Swazi nation land

Poor land preparation and late planting are among the factors responsible for the decline in food production on customary Swazi Nation Land (SNL). While efforts are being made to develop an improved national land cultivation programme, this process can be helped by identifying factors that influence farmers to use alternative technologies for land cultivation. Using cross-section data collected in 2009 from a random sample of 210 farmers in Komati, three land cultivation technologies were identified; (i) use of tractors; (ii) use of draught animals; and (iii) use of hand hoes. For a country like Swaziland where human health problems, particularly HIV/AIDS, make manual labour a scarce resource, the use of tractors is regarded as a modern technology that can achieve time and labour savings. The empirical evidence from this study indicates that the use of tractors is significantly influenced by household wealth and size of arable land used by households. However, given that land holdings on customary land are generally small, sparsely distributed and often fragmented, tractor hire service providers face relatively high overhead and transaction costs. Furthermore, investment in mechanised farming by individual SNL households is constrained by the lack of secure tenure. Given these challenges, this study makes recommendations for creating an enabling environment that could promote the adoption of improved land cultivation methods by smallholders on customary SNL.