Liberia, with a population of just over 5.6 million people, is one of the world's ten poorest countries, with a GDP per capita of US$662.50. The lingering effects of two civil wars (1989-2003), Ebola outbreaks (2014-2015) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) have left Liberia short of achieving widespread development goals. One of its biggest challenges is that the agricultural sector is underdeveloped. Levels of food insecurity remain high. People are food insecure when they lack regular access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life.
Adrino Mazenda conducted research among women-headed households involved in agriculture to find out how they manage. The Conversation Africa's Caroline Southey asked him about the research.
How vulnerable are Liberians to food insecurity?
About 47% of the Liberian population is food insecure.
Food insecurity levels are high across the country and are particularly severe in Liberia's rural areas, where 51% of the population lives.
Agriculture, a key sector in the Liberian economy, is a source of income for over 70% of the population. It accounts for 36% of the country's GDP and makes up an average of 14% of total export earnings.
About 50% of the land area is suitable for cultivation. But only a small portion is cultivated. Farmers have limited access to education and to financial and technological resources. This limits their ability to invest in farming equipment, seeds and fertilisers.
Many commercial farms are run by foreign nationals. Traditional farms make up the largest number of farms and local farmers mostly have smallholdings.
Why the focus on women?
Women play a significant role in Liberia's agriculture. They account for approximately 80% of the agricultural labour and are responsible for 93% of food crop production.
Nevertheless, women-headed agriculture households are particularly affected by food insecurity. They frequently experience inadequate food availability and lack of nutritious food. This is influenced by socioeconomic factors such as education and marital status. Factors such as insufficient crop revenue, inadequate government support and land conflicts are predominant in rural areas.
Our study set out to identify the coping strategies and food insecurity experiences of female-headed agricultural households.
We engaged with 509 female-headed households from urban and rural settings in 2021. The rationale for focusing on these women was that they were primary caregivers and had responsibilities in managing food availability, preparation and ensuring all household members had access to food.
Data was collected through face-to-face interviews. The sampling included 1,800 households, 45 key informants, 45 agro-input vendors and 45 agri-input traders, totalling 1,935 interviews.
What we found
The study illustrated the complexities households face navigating food scarcity challenges.
We found that 90% of the respondents expressed worry about not having enough food, 93.7% could not eat nutritious food, 95.5% tended to consume only a few kinds of foods, and 89.2% skipped meals altogether due to financial constraints.
Some women - though this was less common - experienced extreme food shortages. This included having no food at all (26.1%), going to sleep hungry (14.7%), or going a whole day without eating (12.8%).
Women-headed households within a week to a monthly period used various coping strategies to cushion food insecurity. These included borrowing money, selling assets and reducing health expenses. They also reduced the size of meals, ate leftovers and skipped meals daily.
The study identified 19 coping strategies indicating how different households responded to a lack of food. These were categorised into three severity levels: (least, moderate, and most severe) depending on their impact on families' well-being. The levels indicate the progression of the threat of food insecurity and conform to the Food Insecurity Experience Scale.
- Least severe household coping strategies: Actions that did not affect a household's well-being in the long term were the least severe. The most prevalent was selling non-essential household assets or goods. This was followed by spending savings, and purchasing food on credit or borrowing food.
- Moderately severe household coping strategies: These women showed a heavy reliance on reducing health expenses and begging. A small percentage withdrew children from school and harvested immature crops. These actions reduce households' ability to get out of the difficulties they are in.
- Most severe household coping strategies. Engaging in illegal or degrading income activities (2.2%), selling the last female animals (4.5%), and migrating with the entire household (6.7%). These actions had the potential to cause an irreparable breakdown of households.
We found that the heads of households with lower levels of education were likely to reduce healthcare expenses and resort to begging.
The way forward
Women-headed agriculture households urgently need short-term as well as longer-term solutions to address food insecurity.
In the short term, food-insecure households need interventions that provide immediate relief.
But policy interventions are also needed that offer long-term solutions that tackle the root causes of food insecurity.
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One of these is that the government needs to address cultural practices and land tenure systems. Farmers use slash-and-burn traditional farming methods and foreign nationals often run commercial farms.
In addition, women-headed households need to be empowered. Women form a large part of the labour and production components of sub-Saharan Africa's food outputs.
Women empowerment can be done by:
- Establishing policies that guarantee women secure land tenure and property rights, enabling them to invest in and cultivate their land without the fear of losing it.
- Engaging women in community decision-making processes related to agriculture and food security to ensure their voices and needs are considered.
- Providing women with knowledge about sustainable agricultural practices. Two thirds of women in the study had not completed primary school. Their lack of knowledge was also evident in their reliance on slash-and-burn subsistence agriculture practices.
- Encouraging alternative income-generating activities, such as cultivating high-demand vegetables or herbs for sale at local markets or rearing animals for consumption and sale. Forming cooperatives can help pool resources, access larger markets and reduce input costs.
Adrino Mazenda, Senior Researcher, Associate Professor Economic Management Sciences, University of Pretoria
