Resilience to food insecurity severity among rural, female-headed agrarian households in selected provinces of South Africa

Abstract

Despite their vulnerability to food insecurity, female-headed agrarian households demonstrate remarkable resilience in ensuring household food production. This paper utilises the Rasch and Probit models to delve into households’ resilience to the severity of food insecurity in 386 agrarian female-headed households, drawn from a sample of 2118 female-headed households in South Africa’s marginalised rural provinces of Eastern Cape and Limpopo, drawing on South Africa’s General Household Survey Citation2021/Citation2022. The Rasch model reveals that respondents who consumed few foods and ate less were food-secure (FS < 4). Those who skipped meals and ran out of food and resources were moderately food insecure (MFI 4-6). The probit findings showed that eating a few kinds of food more frequently can enhance the coping abilities of female-led farming households with food insecurity. A slight increase in consumption of these foods and eating them five or more times can improve their coping abilities by 0.454 and 0.259, respectively. A marginal increase in meal skipping is at odds with a decrease of 0.447 times in the number of female-headed agrarian households coping with food insecurity. An increase in food running out decreased the number of female-headed households practising agricultural activities and food insecurity by 0.635. The study recommends establishing safety nets and food emergency management systems to mitigate the impact of climate change and food shocks in female-headed agrarian households. Consequently, water conservation techniques, food storage, mixed cropping, and animal husbandry are needed for better nutritional outcomes. In addition, marketing and value-addition synergies should be encouraged to increase the sector's income-generation capacity.