Measuring Food Insecurity Barrett, Christopher B.
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
02/2010, Volume:
327, Issue:
5967
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Food security is a growing concern worldwide. More than 1 billion people are estimated to lack sufficient dietary energy availability, and at least twice that number suffer micronutrient ...deficiencies. Because indicators inform action, much current research focuses on improving food insecurity measurement. Yet estimated prevalence rates and patterns remain tenuous because measuring food security, an elusive concept, remains difficult.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from ...expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following several years of high food prices, concerted policy efforts to intensify fertilizer and hybrid seed use, and increased public and private investment in agriculture, how low is modern input use in Africa really? This article revisits Africa’s agricultural input landscape, exploiting the unique, recently collected, nationally representative, agriculturally intensive, and cross-country comparable Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) covering six countries in the region (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda). Using data from over 22,000 households and 62,000 agricultural plots, we offer ten potentially surprising facts about modern input use in Africa today.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
The research, development practitioner, and donor community has begun to focus on food loss and waste – often referred to as post-harvest losses (PHL) – in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article reviews ...the current state of the literature on PHL mitigation. First, we identify explicitly the varied objectives underlying efforts to reduce PHL levels. Second, we summarize the estimated magnitudes of losses, evaluate the methodologies used to generate those estimates, and explore the dearth of thoughtful assessment around “optimal” PHL levels. Third, we synthesize and critique the impact evaluation literature around on-farm and off-farm interventions expected to deliver PHL reduction. Fourth, we suggest a suite of other approaches to advancing these same objectives, some of which may prove more cost-effective. Finally, we conclude with a summary of main points.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
We advance a theory of resilience as it applies to the challenges of international development. The conceptualization we advance for development resilience focuses on the stochastic dynamics of ...individual and collective human well-being, especially on the avoidance of and escape from chronjc poverty over time in the face of myriad Stressors and shocks. Development resilience clearly nests within it the related but distinct idea of humanitarian resilience and thereby offers a conceptual apparatus to integrate the humanitarian and development ambitions. We discuss the implications for programming, systems integration, and measurement.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation, with a focus on staple foodgrains (i.e., cereals) in eastern and southern Africa, in an effort to help better identify what ...interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi-subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural Africa. The conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization, at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce, and, perhaps especially, at improving poorer households’ access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi-subsistence poverty traps. Macroeconomic and trade policy tools appear less useful in inducing market participation by poor smallholders in the region.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Preparations from
Echinacea purpurea are among the most widely used herbal medicines. Most uses of
E. purpurea are based on the reported immunological properties.
A series of experiments have ...demonstrated that
E. purpurea extracts do indeed demonstrate significant immunomodulatory activities. Among the many pharmacological properties reported, macrophage activation has been demonstrated most convincingly. Phagocytotic indices and macrophage-derived cytokine concentrations have been shown to be
Echinacea-responsive in a variety of assays. Activation of polymorphonuclear leukocytes and natural killer cells has also been reasonably demonstrated. Changes in the numbers and activities of T- and B-cell leukocytes have been reported, but are less certain. Despite this cellular evidence of immunostimulation, pathways leading to enhanced resistance to infectious disease have not been described adequately. Several dozen human experiments – including a number of blind randomized trials – have reported health benefits. The most robust data come from trials testing
E. purpurea extracts in the treatment for acute upper respiratory infection. Although suggestive of modest benefit, these trials are limited both in size and in methodological quality. Hence, while there is a great deal of moderately good-quality scientific data regarding
E. purpurea, effectiveness in treating illness or in enhancing human health has not yet been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Technological improvements, perhaps especially in agriculture, drive sustainable advances in labor productivity, incomes, food security and general economic growth. But improved technologies are not ...adopted immediately, randomly or completely throughout a population. Any firm economic understanding of the diffusion of a new technology therefore depends on understanding the dynamic and cross-sectional patterns of technology adoption. While the noneconomic social sciences have long emphasized social networks' role in the diffusion of new technologies (Rogers 1962), economists by and large focused on access to input (including financial) and output markets, self-insurance associated with farm size and household wealth, and learning from extension services and experimentation (Feder, Just, and Zilberman 1985). Reprinted by permission of the American Agricultural Economics Association
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, INZLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NMLJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
A recent measure of 'integrated information', Φ(DM), quantifies the extent to which a system generates more information than the sum of its parts as it transitions between states, possibly reflecting ...levels of consciousness generated by neural systems. However, Φ(DM) is defined only for discrete Markov systems, which are unusual in biology; as a result, Φ(DM) can rarely be measured in practice. Here, we describe two new measures, Φ(E) and Φ(AR), that overcome these limitations and are easy to apply to time-series data. We use simulations to demonstrate the in-practice applicability of our measures, and to explore their properties. Our results provide new opportunities for examining information integration in real and model systems and carry implications for relations between integrated information, consciousness, and other neurocognitive processes. However, our findings pose challenges for theories that ascribe physical meaning to the measured quantities.
Full text
Available for:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Explaining variation in life expectancy between individuals of the same age is fundamental to our understanding of population ecology and life history evolution. Variation in the length and rate of ...loss of the protective telomere chromosome caps has been linked to cellular lifespan. Yet, the extent to which telomere length and dynamics predict organismal lifespan in nature is still contentious. Using longitudinal samples taken from a closed population of Acrocephalus sechellensis (Seychelles warblers) studied for over 20 years, we describe the first study into life‐long adult telomere dynamics (1–17 years) and their relationship to mortality under natural conditions (n = 204 individuals). We show that telomeres shorten with increasing age and body mass, and that shorter telomeres and greater rates of telomere shortening predicted future mortality. Our results provide the first clear and unambiguous evidence of a relationship between telomere length and mortality in the wild, and substantiate the prediction that telomere length and shortening rate can act as an indicator of biological age further to chronological age when exploring life history questions in natural conditions.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
•Interoception refers to the signalling and perception of internal bodily sensations.•We validate a three dimensional construct of interoception.•This comprises: interoceptive accuracy, sensibility ...and awareness (metacognition).•These interoceptive dimensions represent dissociable interoceptive processes.•Interoceptive accuracy serves as the core (central) construct.
Interoception refers to the sensing of internal bodily changes. Interoception interacts with cognition and emotion, making measurement of individual differences in interoceptive ability broadly relevant to neuropsychology. However, inconsistency in how interoception is defined and quantified led to a three-dimensional model. Here, we provide empirical support for dissociation between dimensions of: (1) interoceptive accuracy (performance on objective behavioural tests of heartbeat detection), (2) interoceptive sensibility (self-evaluated assessment of subjective interoception, gauged using interviews/questionnaires) and (3) interoceptive awareness (metacognitive awareness of interoceptive accuracy, e.g. confidence-accuracy correspondence). In a normative sample (N=80), all three dimensions were distinct and dissociable. Interoceptive accuracy was only partly predicted by interoceptive awareness and interoceptive sensibility. Significant correspondence between dimensions emerged only within the sub-group of individuals with greatest interoceptive accuracy. These findings set the context for defining how the relative balance of accuracy, sensibility and awareness dimensions explain cognitive, emotional and clinical associations of interoceptive ability.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
PDF
