Livelihoods Strategies and Household Resilience to Food Insecurity: A Case Study from Rural Tunisia

Mohamed Zied Dhraief, Boubaker Dhehibi (), Hamed Daly Hassen, Meriem Zlaoui, Chaima Khatoui, Sondes Jemni, Ouessama Jebali and Mourad Rekik
Additional contact information
Mohamed Zied Dhraief: Rural Economic Department, National Agronomic Research Institute of Tunisia (INRAT), Avenue Hedi Karray, Tunis-Menzah 1004, Tunisia
Hamed Daly Hassen: Rural Economic Department, National Agronomic Research Institute of Tunisia (INRAT), Avenue Hedi Karray, Tunis-Menzah 1004, Tunisia
Meriem Zlaoui: Rural Economic Department, National Agronomic Research Institute of Tunisia (INRAT), Avenue Hedi Karray, Tunis-Menzah 1004, Tunisia
Chaima Khatoui: Rural Economic Department, National Agronomic Research Institute of Tunisia (INRAT), Avenue Hedi Karray, Tunis-Menzah 1004, Tunisia
Sondes Jemni: Rural Economic Department, National Agronomic Research Institute of Tunisia (INRAT), Avenue Hedi Karray, Tunis-Menzah 1004, Tunisia
Ouessama Jebali: Rural Economic Department, National Agronomic Research Institute of Tunisia (INRAT), Avenue Hedi Karray, Tunis-Menzah 1004, Tunisia
Mourad Rekik: Resilient Agricultural Livelihood Systems Program–RALSP, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas–ICARDA, Amman 950764, Jordan

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Due to the decrease of household incomes, the increase of food prices, and the negative effects of climate change on agricultural production, Tunisia faces a food insecurity challenge, especially in rural and arid areas. The purpose of our research is to understand and explore household resilience to food insecurity in two villages, Selta and Zoghmar, in central Tunisia. A cross-sectional survey of 250 sample households was conducted in the villages. Factor analysis and regression models were employed to analyze the data using SPSS version 21. The results indicate that only around 36% of the households were resilient at different levels. In Selta, 62.8% and in Zoghmar 66.7% of the households were vulnerable. As indicated by the factor loadings and beta coefficients, income and food access, adaptive capacity, and the social safety net were important dimensions of household resilience to food insecurity, being positively correlated with the resilience index. However, asset possession, and climate change negatively affect household resilience. Therefore, interventions must target strategies that address the different levels of resilience reflected by the resilience estimators. These estimators were generated by focusing mainly on building farmers’ knowledge of how to face the different difficulties and challenges.

Keywords: Resilience index; livelihood strategies; farmers’ behaviors; food insecurity; rural Tunisia (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 (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/907/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/907/ (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:3:p:907-:d:204768

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 ().