Maria Sassi

Short-term determinants of malnutrition among children in Malawi

Short-term determinants of Severe Acute Malnutrition in children in Malawi during the period 2003 to 2009 were investigated in the three regions that compose Malawi – northern, central and southern – through an OLS approach and a first-order autocorrelation model. Explanatory variables were selected according to the definition of food security provided by the 1996 World Food Summit. Monthly changes in the number of children admitted to Nutrition and Rehabilitation Units was the impact variable adopted. The explanatory variables selected included a proxy of household income spent on food and the monthly variation in domestic price of maize, its trend, cyclical, seasonal and irregular components, informal cross-border imports in maize, urea price, non-food price index, and number of Nutrition and Rehabilitation Units. The study integrates recently developed studies on food insecurity in Malawi with regional and monthly perspectives. Results verify that child malnutrition is a chronic problem fuelled by transitory food insecurity, including seasonal and temporary features, with the common determinant being the market dependence of households on food purchases during the lean season. This impact is exacerbated by regional-specific explanatory variables: the variation in seasonal and irregular maize price components and the non-food price index in the central region, along with the cyclical maize price component and net cross-border maize imports in southern Malawi.

Commodity Food Prices: Review and Empirics

The present paper provides a literature review of studies examining the potential causes and consequences of recent surges in food and agricultural commodity prices. Furthermore, this paper uses the structural trend methodology proposed by Koopman et al. (2009) to analyze movements in the IMF monthly commodity food price index for the period 1992(11)–2012(10) and to provide forecasts for the period 2012(11)–2014(12). The empirical results indicate that commodity food prices present seasonality and cyclicality with the longest periodicity of two years. The empirical findings identify certain structural breaks in commodity food price series as well as outliers. These structural breaks seem to capture the trend component of the price series well, while the outliers take account of temporal effects, that is, short-lived spikes. Finally, the presented forecasts show high and volatile commodity food prices.

Seasonality and Trends in Child Malnutrition: Time-Series Analysis of Health Clinic Data from the Dowa District of Malawi

Abstract This article investigates the factors most affecting year-to-year trends and month-to-month fluctuations in underweight among children under five years of age in the Dowa District of Malawi from 2004 to 2012, including both the ability of households to obtain and utilise food and to child-related policy interventions. Time series regressions reveal strong hungry-season effects associated with both food availability and disease transmission, in addition to trends in household health. These findings reveal the complex nature of child malnutrition in the Dowa District and the importance of a food and nutritional security approach in understanding and addressing this phenomenon.

The welfare cost of maize price volatility in Malawi

This paper investigates conditional and unconditional maize price volatility in Malawi at the country and local-economy market levels and related welfare costs. The empirical analysis applies an ARCH/GARCH approach that uses monthly data from January 1991 to March 2013, and the welfare cost is estimated via the Lucas formula. The study findings underline the importance of the domestic factors in explaining maize price volatility and of seasonality in affecting the unconditional variance and welfare cost.

Modello di sviluppo rurale e nuove sfide di programmazione territoriale

On the basis of the features of the new approach to the European Rural Development Policy, the article defines a framework suitable for the design of interventions aimed at an endogenous, participatory and sustainable growth of the rural context. The core of the model is represented by the territorial capital that is characterised and estimated with respect to the Oltrepo Pavese a typical Italian rural area. A clustering analysis is suggested as methodology for data collection and policy making.

Politica agricola comunitaria e approccio territoriale alla coesione economica e sociale europea

The European Commission is promoting a reflection on territorial convergence. The understanding of the local impact of the CAP is one of the key issues at the core of its political agenda. In the light of these considerations, the paper critically reviews, through the EU documents, the evolution of the CAP in the light of the changes in the Regional Policy. The main critical areas underlined contribute to the current debate concerning the reform of the European intervention in the agricultural sector in the light of the forthcoming EU budget review.

The History of Food Security: Approaches and Policies

This chapter reviews the evolution of food security approaches and policies by decade, starting in the 1940s, emphasising the role of stakeholders. A specific attention is dedicated to food insecurity in the new millennium with the description of the food crisis and their institutional and policy consequences. In this context, the new architecture of the food security intervention sets by the international community is presented This chapter concludes examining the future challenges related to the need for political will, sound governance and participation.

Indicators for Monitoring Food Security

This chapter provides the elements for the interpretation of the indicators used for monitoring food security and the most adopted methodology to assess food security indicators at the household and individual levels. Focusing on the national level, this chapter illustrates the suite of food security indicators adopted by the FAO, the Global Hunger Index, a multidimensional indicator produced by the IFPRI, and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale developed by the FAO as a measure of the lived experience of food insecurity. This part is followed by the presentation of the consolidated approach to the computation of the Food Consumption Score, the spending on food index, the Dietary Diversity Index, the Coping Strategy Index, and the Household Hunger Scale: it also informs on their interpretation. At the end of this chapter, the reader will be able to understand and use the most adopted indicators for monitoring food security for the purpose of building political will, designing effective policies, and targeting resource allocation.

Food Security Basics

This chapter presents the technical definition of food security introduced by the 2008 World Food Summit and its evolution over time. It analyses the core concepts introduced by this definition and clarifies its distinguishing features with respect to those of the concept of nutrition security, food self-sufficiency, poverty, undernutrition, malnutrition and hunger. The dynamic aspect of the technical definition of food security is linked to the concept of vulnerability to food insecurity and resilience in a food security context. This chapter also addresses the juridical and political aspects of food security and compares them with the technical definition. At the end of this chapter, the reader will be able to describe the relevant features of the food security target and identify the most important elements for designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating policies, programmes and project focused on fighting hunger and malnutrition.

Conceptual Frameworks for the Analysis of Food Security

This chapter illustrates six conceptual frameworks suitable for identifying the information to be collected for the elaboration of appropriate indicators to assess the food security status and its features. The neoclassical framework investigates the different typologies of food deficit at the macro-level. Two other frameworks are presented as examples of conceptual structures that can be adopted for the identification of the causes of the individual and child malnutrition. One is mainly used in the academic literature and the other has been designed by UNICEF for the purpose of programming at the national, district, and local levels. Afterwards, the basic elements of the Sustainable Livelihood Approach and the Household Economy Approach are presented as livelihood-based frameworks. The first framework examines the influence of macro-level policy and institutions on household livelihood options, whereas the second is an instrument to predict short-term changes in the population’s access to food to realize more effective decision making. The Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis Model is the last presented framework. It is used to investigate the household resilience to food insecurity. At the end of this chapter, the reader will be able to understand the standard elements of different conceptual frameworks for analysing food security.