Food Insecurity in the Drought-prone Rural Areas of Tigray, Ethiopia: Associated Precipitation Variability and Response Mechanisms

Abstract

Tigray is one of the food-insecure regions in Ethiopia with many people living under the condition of chronic hunger. Rigorous food security studies are vital for proper intervention mechanisms. Yet, previous food security studies have rarely addressed the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability. On the other hand, the impact of precipitation variability on food security is very significant. For food-insecure rural areas, understanding the nature of precipitation variability and its teleconnection has paramount importance in guiding regional and local-level decisions. However, there is a lack of information regarding the nature of precipitation variability and the degree of impact the climate factors have on the precipitation pattern of the study areas. In addition, there is limited knowledge regarding how vulnerable rural households deal with food insecurity. Furthermore, food security intervention mechanisms applied by various governmental and non-governmental agents is not studied well. Thus, this study aims to investigate the food insecurity status of the drought-prone rural areas of Tigray in relation to the associated precipitation variability, coping, adaptation, and intervention mechanisms. This study has employed a cross-sectional study design based on a mixed research approach with primary and secondary data. For this, 363 households from three selected drought-prone rural districts, i.e. Atsbi-wenberta, Irob, and Hintalo-wejerat were studied. Primary data were collected using questionnaires, key-informant interviews, Focus Group Discussions, and observations. And, secondary data were collected from relevant archives and policy documents. Questions from Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) were adapted to measure the food availability, access to food, and stability components of food security. And, Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), Food Consumption Score (FCS), MidUpper Arm Circumference (MUAC), and Bitot’s spot were used to analyze the food utilization aspect. Besides, the precipitation, sea-surface temperature (SST), and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indices data for the study were used from 1979 to 2019. A Summary of descriptive statistics and Mann-Kendall tests were used to detect trends; Sen’s Slope and coefficient of variation were used to analyze the magnitude of the trend and degree of variation in the precipitation pattern. Further, Pearson’s correlation is used to determine the effect of ENSO, and SST variations on the precipitation using the Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA). Data analysis techniques consisting of descriptive statistics, Coping Strategies Index (CSI), and Paired Comparative Analysis (PCA) were used to analyze the household’s coping and adaptation strategies. Data regarding food security intervention mechanisms were analyzed content-wise. Findings show that 68 percent of the studied community frequently ate less food than they felt they needed and 82.1 percent of the households have experienced hunger because of lack of food. The study showed that rural districts were poorly connected to the road networks; 87.9 percent of the elderly and 20.4 percent of the women and girls had no access to food markets. Regarding food utilization, 81.5 percent of the studied households had poor FCS; the average HDDS and FCS for the study areas were 2.47 and 18.9, respectively. In the study areas, the prevalence of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM), Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) for children aged 6-59 months were 50.3, 4.2, and 46.1 percent, respectively. More notably, the prevalence of SAM for children from the food-insecure households was 21.2 percent. The prevalence of MAM for pregnant and lactating women (PLW) in the study areas was 59.5. Further, the prevalence of Bitot’s spot among 6-59 months of age children was 1.9 percent. On the other hand, all the rural households had anxiety about their future food demands. Meanwhile, the average annual precipitation for Atsbi, Irob and Hintalo was 542.5, 318, and 520.7, respectively.xii Hintalo’s average precipitation for March-May was declining by 16.3mm per annum (P<0.01) and its average annual precipitation was declining by 4.1mm per annum (P<0.05). The SST of central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean and northeast and northwest equatorial Atlantic Ocean was strongly correlated with the April average precipitation of the three districts. In addition, SST of the South, West, and southwest of the equatorial Indian Ocean, and West equatorial Pacific Ocean was associated with July-September average precipitation with greater variation in strength among the three districts. Moreover, July’s average precipitation of the three districts, April’s average precipitation of Atsbi and Irob, and May’s precipitation of Hintalo are found significantly associated with the ENSO indices of JFM and FMA (P<0.01); MJJ and MAM (P<0.05). Regarding the coping strategies, 74.4, 74.1, and 73.8 percent of the studied households were frequently limiting the portion of household’s meal size, depending on aid, and consuming less quality and cheap food, respectively to cope with food insecurity. About 70 percent of the food-insecure rural households were relying on the most severe coping strategies. The average CSI score was 148.5 out of 301 with the highest result of 268 implying severe food insecurity status. Further, 77.1 and 69.5 percent of the studied households have never practiced the adaptation strategies of preparing alternative wetting and rainwater harvesting, respectively. Livestock production, cultivating drought-tolerant crops, and shorter-duration crops were the first three prioritized adaptation strategies of the households. There were several international interventions intended to halt food insecurity sustainably through financial aid, but many of the interventions were found to be responding to humanitarian crises mainly the food shortages. Ethiopia’s Food and Nutrition Policy, Food Security Program, Food Security Strategy, and Food Security Pack program were the food security intervention mechanisms at the national level. These interventions were found to be inconsistent with each other in achieving their intended goals. Regionally, no food security strategy or program was found intervening in the prevailing food insecurity of Tigray. More notably, apart from the PSNP office, no specific food security office was found in Tigray during the study period. Food aid and PSNP transfers have been the usual food security intervention mechanisms at a community level. 35.6 percent (77,010) of the population in the study rural districts were found to be rural PSNP beneficiaries. The food aid and PSNP transfers were outrageously insufficient for the recipients to cope with food insecurity. The rural households living in the studied areas were found to be critically food-insecure. All the measurements implied that the food insecurity situation was unacceptably worrisome and lifethreatening. This calls for an instant action to avert the occurrence of famine and starvation in the drought-prone rural areas of Tigray region. Thus, interventions should primarily target the vulnerable rural people and need to be planned based on attaining food availability first rather than concurrently addressing all components of food security. The limited amount of precipitation, exacerbated by a higher degree of variability, makes the food production in the three districts more uncertain. Therefore, the task of achieving food security should incorporate the design of informed food production strategies that can adapt to the limited and variable precipitation based on these SST and ENSO indices. Most of the food-insecure households were using severe coping strategies, and the mostly applied adaptation strategies were barely recommended to deal with the varying and short precipitations. Therefore, relevant organizations should focus on enhancing these households’ coping and adaptive capacities to deal with the problems. In this regard, all the food security intervention mechanisms of various levels should be integrated into the common goal of achieving food security