Factors Associated with Household Food Security in Zambia

William Nkomoki, Miroslava Bavorová and Jan Banout
Additional contact information
William Nkomoki: Department of Sustainable Technology, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Prague 6-Suchdol, Czech Republic
Miroslava Bavorová: Department of Economics and Development, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Prague 6-Suchdol, Czech Republic
Jan Banout: Department of Sustainable Technology, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Prague 6-Suchdol, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: Food security is a global challenge and threatens mainly smallholder farmers in developing countries. The main aim of this paper is to determine factors that are associated with food security in Zambia. This study utilizes the household questionnaire survey dataset of 400 smallholder farmers in four districts conducted in southern Zambia in 2016. To measure food security, the study employs two food security indicators, namely the food consumption score (FCS) and the household hunger scale (HHS). Two ordered probit models are estimated with the dependent variables FCS and HHS. Both the FCS and HHS models’ findings reveal that higher education levels of household head, increasing livestock income, secure land tenure, increasing land size, and group membership increase the probability of household food and nutrition security. The results imply that policies supporting livestock development programs such as training of farmers in animal husbandry, as well as policies increasing land tenure security and empowerment of farmers groups, have the potential to enhance household food and nutrition security.

Keywords: determinants; food security; hunger; policies; smallholder (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/9/2715/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/9/2715/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:9:p:2715-:d:230756

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().