Improved food security among vulnerable households in the drylands of Africa is one of DCG’s main goals. According to the FAO “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. Food security might mean different things to different people and it depends on a range of different factors: agricultural productivity, redistribution, relevant national and regional policies, nutritional aspects, participation in decision-making, gender and power relations, secured livelihood strategies, and land tenure to mention a few. FAO identifies four components of food security:

• access (quantity of food in the market and purchasing power),
• availability (quantity from and capacity for own production),
• utilization (changes in household consumption trends), and
• asset creation (as part of coping strategies).

Food insecurity is an especially critical problem in dryland areas as rainfall is often perceived as the most limiting factor for agricultural and pastoralist production systems. People who are vulnerable are often prone to food insecurity. As a result, they engage in different coping strategies such as diversification. For example, they cultivate a diversity of food crops in order to improve their nutrition and ensure a food base in case some crops fail. These coping strategies will be more or less successful, depending on the degree of environmental, social or economic stress faced by people at different points in time. In some cases, efforts can be made to strengthen people’s existing coping strategies, while in other, developing new strategies would be more appropriate.

The definition of food security as well as coping strategies are often location specific, and may differ by for example socio-economic group, ethnic group or gender. As a result, DCG holds on to an interdisciplinary, contextual and holistic approach to food security. Since food security is influenced by several factors, DCG engages in research around this topic in a similarly diverse way. For example, one of DCG's studies focused on how HIV/AIDS and gender inequality affect coping strategies linked to food security in Ethiopia. Based on the findings recommendations are made on how this information could be taken into account in food security interventions (see DCG Report 32).

(Sources: DCG Report 1B, Ingrid Nyborg, and FAO)