VIAJ.E A LA ALCARRIA

Households that are vulnerable to food insecurity employ different strategies to reduce and/or mitigate risks based on their internal endowments and their access to external assistance (Mahrijan and Chhetri, 2006). In this regard, there are two types of strategies employed by the households to reduce risks. They are ex-post coping and ex-ante adaptive strategies (Degefa, 2005; Adger et al., 2004; Dietz and von der Geest, 2004).

2.3.1. Ex-post Coping Strategies

In the 1960s and 1970s, poor people were often depicted in social science literature as passive victims who were economically exploited and marginalized (Dietz and von der Geest, 2004). In line with this, Webb and Braun (1994:56) raised a question about “what do people do when faced with the threat of starvation?” Maxwell (2008:2) also put a leading question as “what do you do when you do not have enough food, and do not have enough money to buy food?” People are not passive receivers of undesirable situations; they employ several strategies to manage risks. Webb and Braun (1994) also indicated that people who die during famine should not be seen as passive victims but losers of a hard struggle for survival. Therefore, when hazards or undesirable conditions happen people try to cope with and not rely much on outsiders, unless and otherwise everything becomes out of their control (Heijmens, 2001). Webb and Braun (1994) showed that coping mechanisms do not involve overnight awakening to danger, rather a progression of narrowing options from broader attempt to local in minimizing risk. Thus, coping

33 strategies represent a set of activities that are undertaken in a particular sequence by a household in response to exogenous shocks, which include famine, drought and other calamities (Dietz and von der Geest, 2004; Querish, 2007; Patrice 1993; Webb and Braun, 1994). Van der Geest and Dietz (2004) specifically indicated that coping strategies show a sequential pattern and that increased knowledge about the sequence could inform early warning systems to be planned to overcome famine. The same authors also added that coping strategies have discrete stages and households move to the next stage after they exhaust the first stage.

Other writers such as Devereux (1993), Corbett (1988), Ellis (2003) and Sorensen et al. (2004) do not agree to the sequential pattern of coping strategies and, in real situations, sequential approach may or may not be practical because different responses do not have similar time relevance. Though there are times when people‟s responses occur simultaneously, parallel processes may be taken rather than sequential events. Besides, the extent to which any household is forced to move along the sequence depends on its economic class. For example, poor households are much more likely to reach the latter stages in these sequences (selling farmland or out migration) (Corbett, 1988). Similarly, Ellis (2003) investigated that households dispose moveable assets first (savings, stocks, livestock) and later on, they may dispose buildings, even land, thus placing themselves in a position of inability to recover from shocks in the future. Scholars such as Desalegn (1991), Patrice (1993), Ejiga (2006), Wondowsen (2011), Kinyangi et al. (2009), Downing and Washington (1999) indicated that coping strategies are undertaken in a particular sequence in response to exogenous shocks in which each response is used exhaustively before the household moves on to the next response.

2.3.2. Empirical Studies on Ex-Post Coping Strategies

Desalegn (1991) in his study in Wollo of Ethiopia has shown four sequential stages of coping strategies: reduction in variety and quality of foods consumed, temporary migration, divestment, and crisis migration (mass deaths and wide scale dislocation of

34 communities). Webb and Braun (1994), in a study in Ethiopia indicated that when households face hunger and famine, they draw from their savings, use food reserves, diversify sources of income and reduce expenditure on non-food items in the initial stages of famine. During the later stages of famine, they switched to consuming famine foods and even family migration. In Bangladesh, households facing flood-created food shortages and responses include reducing the number of meals per day, changing the types of food items they consumed and borrowing food from neighbors (Frongillo and Wolfe, 2001). Quaye (2008) identified coping mechanisms used by households in northern Ghana. The author listed them as collection of wild foods, market purchases, food payment in kind, support from relatives and friends, sales of livestock, migration and engagement in wage labor. Furthermore, where the quantity of food becomes short, households limit intake between families, reduce the number of meals per day; and when it is severe, they pass the whole day without eating.

2.3.3. Ex-ante Adaptive Strategies

Adaptation is a novel concept in the climate change field (Smit and Wandel, 2006).The same authors also indicated that adaptations are considered to assess the degree to which they can moderate or reduce negative impacts of climate change, or realize positive effects, to avoid the danger. This leads the fact that people actively manage risk/hazard in a variety of ways (Ellis, 3003). Among these, the ex-ante adaptive measures help to improve food availability and access their own production and income diversification. It anticipates events of shocks in advance (Mahrijan and Chhetri, 2006; Ellis, 3003). Often reducing risk is not an option, so households try to mitigate risk via multiple livelihood strategies or diversification. Here, diversification means not putting all “one‟s eggs in one basket” (Pandy and Bhandair, 2009). Maintaining flexibility is also an adaptive strategy that allows farmers to switch to activities as the situation demands (Pandey, 2009). For example, a switch from the use of artificial fertilizers to compost is an adaptive strategy. Davis (1996) and Start and Johnson (2004) indicated that the ex-ante adaptation strategies include like extensification (cultivation of more land), on-farm and off-farm

35 diversification (for example, change in cropping mix, wage labor), intensification of cash cropping, and investments in social capital. This principle is true for rural households who use different types of activities to reduce shocks. Thus, ex-ante adaptation is a continuous process of change to livelihoods, often geared towards enhancing existing security and wealth, and reducing vulnerability and poverty (Ellis, 2000). Since adaptive mechanisms are long-term tactics, government involvement significantly reduces the shocks. For example, implementing water harvesting techniques, employ resettlement program in suitable ecological areas, safety net programs, water-soil management practices, selecting seeds suitable to drought-prone areas, etc. reduce households‟ vulnerability to food insecurity (Adger et al., 2004; Yaro, 2006).