ABSTRACT
Amartya Sen’s critique of the prevailing climate-food supply-famine framework (Sen, 1981) caused the common agrotechnical assumption that more food production will also provide more food for the rural poor and less famine to be increasingly challenged. Today, most agree that food insecurity is primarily a result of low household incomes, poverty, and lack of access rather than inadequate aggregate food supply (Watts, 1991; Maxwell and Frankenberger, 1992; Davies, 1996; Dilley and Boudreau, 2001; Gladwin et al., 2001). Food security is defined as “sufficient food consumption by all people at all times for a healthy and productive life” (Thomson and Metz, 1997). Chronic food insecurity is a longterm problem, caused by lack of income or assets at the household level to produce or buy sufficient and adequate food for the entire household (Gladwin et al., 2001). As a solution, complex approaches that link food security issues to livelihood systems have been proposed rather than encouraging smallholders to grow more food crops. These approaches focus on multiple livelihood strategies at the household level. They include alternative, nonfarm income-generating activities that diversify and increase poor people’s income, enhance their food security, and make livelihoods more sustainable in the long run (Devereux, 1993; Sanchez, 2000; Gladwin et al., 2001).
