A Framework for Understanding Rural Livelihoods
This paper describes Save the Children Fund-UK’s
Food Economy Approach to analysing household
food security, adopted by the organisation in the
early 1990s. The paper details the way in which
the access of individual households to food, both
in ‘normal’ and ‘bad’ years, is identified and
quantified. The paper examines the conceptual
background to the model, asking “what is the food
economy approach?”, “what is it used for?”, “how
does it work?”and “who does what?”. It goes on
to detail the development of the ‘baseline picture’,
– how different families in a particular food
economy area normally obtain food and non-food
income. Information gathering, quantification and
calculation methodologies are discussed with the
aid of pie-charts and tables. Three case studies
examine the application of the approach in
southern Sudan, northern Kenya and Rwanda.