Linking Cultural and Marketing Practices of (Agro)pastoralists to Food (In)security

Abstract

Many pastoralist communities around the world rely on the traditional livestock farming sub-sector for a living and to meet their food consumption needs. Food insecurity, on the other hand, is a growing concern in these communities, and the reasons for this must be understood in order to implement appropriate policy measures to improve food security. Based on data collected from Aramis-Adaar and the Asale pastoralist and agro-pastoralist (hereafter (agro)pastoralist) communities in Afar, Ethiopia, this study investigates the relationship between social–cultural–economic characteristics and food (in)security. To measure the severity of food insecurity and assess the associations, we used the household food insecurity access score (HFIAS) and ordered logistic regression, respectively. Our findings show that food insecurity in the study area is persistent where improvement in food security is significantly constrained by some culture elements (the (agro)pastoralists’ cultural orientation). It has also been found that the (agro)pastoralists’ market exchange practices, as well as the centuries-old practice of guro (livestock mobility as a traditional coping strategy), help to reduce food insecurity. These findings contribute to our understanding of food insecurity in the (agro)pastoralist context and thereby add to the ‘move-up’ or ‘move-out’ pastoralist development policy debate. Therefore, the results suggest that there is a need for a combination of approaches that combine pastoral production services and market production orientation and capitalize on (agro)pastoralist traditions, such as mobility, to promote sustained (agro)pastoral livelihoods and ‘move-up’ the pastoral production system.