Impacts of HIV/AIDS on food consumption and wild food use in rural South Africa
- Authors: Ncube, Keitometsi , Shackleton, Charlie M , Swallow, Brent M , Dassanayake, Wijaya
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/180412 , vital:43385 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-016-0624-4"
- Description: HIV/AIDS can affect household food consumption in many ways, including through reductions in availability and quality of labour, reductions in earned income, and increased expenditure on medications. In rural South Africa, these negative effects can be buffered by social safety net programs provided by government and collection of wild foods. Despite some acknowledgement of the potential safety net role of wild foods, however, their contribution relative to other food sources in the context of HIV/AIDS remains underexplored. Here we report empirical findings from two rural communities in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to characterise food sources, intake and calories from 68 HIV/AIDS afflicted households and 87 non-afflicted households every quarter over 12 months. Results show that diets were moderately well-balanced though limited in variety, with cereal items contributing 52 % to total calorie intake. The bulk of food consumed by households was purchased, with supplementation from own production, collected wild vegetables and collected wild fruits. Up to 20 % of respondents from both HIV/ AIDS afflicted and non-afflicted households had insufficient daily caloric intake. Multivariate analyses show that, all else equal, individuals living in households afflicted by HIV/AIDS consumed fewer calories, had less diverse diets, and were more dependent on wild foods than those living in non-afflicted households. Given the detrimental effects of HIV/AIDS on income and home production, wild foods represent a free and readily available food source for vulnerable households.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Addressing local level food insecurity amongst small-holder communities in transition
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Hamer, Nicholas G , Swallow, Brent M , Ncube, K
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Food security -- South Africa Economic development -- South Africa Rural development -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/50090 , vital:25958
- Description: Food insecurity affects as significant proportion of the world's population and hence it typically receives priority attention in global policies associated with poverty, equity and sustainable development. For example, it is the first of the Millennium Development Goals and the second of their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals. Access to sufficient and nutritious food is deemed a basic human right. The latest FAO analysis of the “State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014” reports that 805 million people (approximately 11-12% of the world's population) are chronically undernourished (i.e. do not have sufficient energy intake over a period of at least one year). In sub-Saharan Africa the prevalence remains stubbornly high at 24%, the highest in the world. Whilst most interpret food insecurity to mean an insufficient quantity of food (as measured by the number of calories consumed), the widely accepted FAO definition considers four dimensions of food security, namely quantity, quality or diversity, access and use. Provision of enough calories on a daily basis is not sufficient if the diet lacks diversity and appropriate balance to provide the full range of minerals and vitamins necessary for proper health, or if the food available is culturally unacceptable. Thus, there is a pressing need for more nuanced analyses of food security against all four of the dimensions embedded in the concept. Additionally, it is important that these be measured at more local or regional levels because national statistics can mask alarming regional discrepancies in food security, or amongst particular sectors of society, such as recent migrants, refugees, female- or child-headed households, those vulnerable to HIV/AIDS or the landless, to mention just a few. For example, at a national level South Africa is considered a food secure nation with respect to staple requirements, and access to sufficient food is enshrined in the Constitution (Section 27, subsection 1b), but nationally one in twenty (i.e. approx. 2.5 million people) go to bed hungry most nights, and 23% of children below the age of 15 are physically stunted, severely stunted or wasted, due to the long-term ill effects of insufficient food or of inadequate diversity and quality. At a subnational level, there are marked differences between rural and urban populations and even between geographic areas (for example, the prevalence of stunting amongst boys less than 15 years old is 23% in the Eastern Cape, compared to 12% in Gauteng). Once again, despite being a food secure nation, nationally 40% of the population have a dietary diversity score of four or less, which is a cut-off point signifying poor dietary diversity which makes people more vulnerable to malnutrition and ill health, and in Limpopo and Northwest provinces it is as high as 66% and 61%, respectively.
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- Date Issued: 2015