FOOD SECURITY, FOOD PRICES AND CLIMATE VARIABILITY - Food Security, Food Prices and Climate Variability - page 7

These variations in production, if sufficiently widespread and intense, can in turn affect the
local price of food in isolated markets, since local demand rises while supply falls (Fafchamps,
2004). When most participants of an affected market are farmers with little cash income, lack
of local purchasing power reduces the incentives of traders and others outside the region to
supply the market despite increases in prices and potential profits. The subsequent reductions
in the amount of food purchased and consumed by the poorest people in these areas can put
millions of people at risk for malnutrition, particularly the young, old and sick who are more
vulnerable (Darnton-Hill and Cogill, 2009). These and other factors besides overall quantities
of food produced affect the price of food in small, developing region markets, including
global cereal prices, fuel prices, transportation infrastructure, national policies, political stability
and other influences (Swinnen and Squicciarini, 2012).
Because the concept of food systems includes both the socio-economic and the biophysical
components of food security, it is very useful for assessing the impact of climate variability and
change on food security (Ericksen, 2008). It also has a number of components that are not
discussed here, including food safety, allocation across different members of a household, food
preferences and food use, as well as the concept of the social value of food. This topic is con-
cerned primarily with broader, community-level food security assessment and the impact on
food security of changing food prices in the context of humanitarian aid (Barrett and Maxwell,
2005; Brown et al ., 2009). Although the concepts of social value, intra-household distribution
and food safety are critically important, they require ine-scale information that is often not
available and therefore they are not incorporated into the framework that is presented here.
Communities that are food insecure may be significantly vulnerable to changes in the
climate. Vulnerability can be thought of as a function of exposure to a hazard (e.g., lack of
rainfall in a growing season month), sensitivity to the hazard (e.g., maize crop is at its emer-
gent growing phase and needs water) and, finally, adaptive capacity in the face of the hazard
(e.g., the ability of the farming household to replace the lost maize seed from other sources)
(Ericksen et al ., 2011). If people have sufficient assets or strategies to manage a shock without
suffering harm, then they are not considered to be vulnerable to that shock (McCarthy et al .,
2001). Exposure to changing climate patterns alone will not necessarily lead to increased vul-
nerability. Climate variability is just one more stressor on top of all the other economic and
social factors that cause food insecurity (Nelson et al ., 2010). If climate causes significant
reductions in food availability or raises food prices in the short term, the poor will simply eat
less to compensate to avoid long-term degradation of their assets, resulting in harm to social
welfare (Watts, 1981).
Analysis of the outcome of short-term reductions in food consumption usually occurs at
the community level using outcome indicators regarding nutrition (percent of underweight
children under five, body mass index of women of child bearing age, etc.). These indicators
do not describe the underlying processes that contribute to malnutrition, such as chronic
poverty, disease or lack of access to diverse and nutritionally adequate diet (Ericksen et al .,
2011). To analyze these factors, the level of analysis must move from the region and com-
munity level to the individual and household level using household survey information. By
focusing on individuals and households, a much more nuanced view can be gained of the
impact of weather shocks and food price increases on vulnerable communities ( Johnson et al .,
2013). There is much to be gained by examining these data, and thus in this topic we examine
household survey information to understand the likely dual effect of food prices and climate
variability on nutrition outcomes.