Depth of Food Insecurity and Malnutrition Status in Traditional Rain Fed Sector in Sudan Volume 4 - Issue 1

Fatima ELhassan Eltahir*, Samar Abdullah and Eltighani Elamin

• Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Sudan

Received: July 19, 2018;   Published: July 31, 2018

Corresponding author: Fatima ELhassan Eltahir, Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Sudan

DOI: 10.32474/CIACR.2018.04.000178

Abstract PDF

Sudan is endowed with vast and diverse agricultural resource base that provides various means of sustaining livelihood. Although there is sufficient production in some seasons, but it cannot achieve food and nutrition security for the whole population. Food security depends in Agriculture as a backbone for food availability among the farm households in Blue Nile State, which make it difficult to obtain their sufficient food needs from their low production. The overall objective of this research is to measure food insecurity and malnutrition situation within the farm household in the state through specific objectives to: Identify the main livelihood systems among households, analyze the food and nutrition insecurity and to identify prevalence of undernourished and the depth of food insecurity. The adopted research methodology started by developing a questionnaire to gather the primary data supported by secondary data from different sources. The selection of the studied area (Blue Nile state), is based on the fact that the situation need to be deeply investigated for better analysis and better interventions. The analysis based on two analytical methods; descriptive analysis and modeling by using ADePT – FSM, to reach the results that satisfy the objectives of the research. Sets of indicators are analyzed to get a real picture on the food and nutrition situation in the state, some among others are; production, food consumption, coping mechanisms, Household Diet Diversity Score, estimation of nutrient intake by income quantiles and estimation depth of food deficit and prevalence of undernourished people.

The main results obtained by the analysis indicated that during the hazards the households practice some coping mechanism to adapt the situation. It is found that at state level 45% do not practice any of the coping mechanisms which means that they can withstand the shocks, while 23% use low coping mechanism, 19% and 14% use medium and high coping mechanisms respectively. Low diet diversity exists among the households which illustrated that 5.64 and 4,65 food groups were consumed (with and without sugar) respectively and this is one of the drivers of malnutrition status. When analyzing the nutrition in the different income group, it is revealed that the lowest macro nutrient intake is estimated within the lowest income quantile; 54,57, 342,32 and 37.57 g/ person/day for protein, carbohydrate and fats respectively, while the results for the middle-income quantile showed an estimation of 62.92, 363,48 and 48.66 for proteins, carbohydrates and fats respectively. The highest income group which consume diversified food shows a result of 118.71, 643,06 and 90.02 g/ person/ day, and this support them with enough energy to maintain a good life. The results of Prevalence of Undernourishment indicate the levels of undernourished between the farm HH as 26.61 which is considered high. Depth of food deficit is found to be very high (257.7 kcal/person/day), compared to FAO standard (177.2). To improve the deteriorated food and nutrition situation in the state a number of policies and interventions have been proposed by the researcher including transformation the subsistence agriculture into a productive enterprise through forming series of agricultural policies that aimed at improving production, markets performances, post-harvest process and credit facilities to enhance availability and access. In terms of utilization; improving nutrition status by diversification and awareness raising. Nevertheless, the focusing in children’s feeding and improving food cultures by enhancing the production and manufacturing of nutritive products especially for children and other targeted groups.

Keywords: Farm Households, Coping mechanisms, nutrient intake, Depth of Food Deficit, Malnutrition, ADePT – FSM.