Assessing food security status among low-income households in Tshwane, South Africa

Abstract

Food insecurity has traditionally been viewed as a rural problem, and intervention programmes have been mainly focused on increasing food production to achieve food self-sufficiency. However, these intervention programmes have been inadequate in addressing food insecurity in urban areas, where households have limited access to farming land and rely mostly on cash income to realise their food security needs. Understanding household food security in urban areas therefore requires different intervention strategies to those for food security in rural areas.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the food security status among low-income households in Tshwane in order to determine the extent and the nature of food insecurity in these communities. The food security status of the households was calculated using Food Security indicators that were based on the 6-item questionnaire derived from the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) as suggested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2000), as well as from the South African 4-item questions used in the General Household Survey of 2012. The study consisted of a population size of approximately 700 000 people who visited health care centres in the district of Tshwane, and a total sample of 66 383 individuals was selected for this study. The data was not collected from each household member but rather from a member of the household who visited the health care centres in the time that the study was conducted. The results indicated that a significantly large number of the sampled households are food secure; however, the dwelling conditions of those who were found to be food insecure were rather very poor. In addition, the study assessed the factors associated with food security status among low-income households in these urban areas, and the results indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between the level of food security and water source, type of dwelling, condition of dwelling, ownership of dwelling, and availability of electricity among others. It was discovered that households that have an electricity connection were more likely to be food secure, as compared with households that do not have electricity connection. Moreover, households that have access to piped water in the house or in the yard were likely to be more food secure than households that did not have access to piped water. Households that had better dwelling conditions and better housing were more likely to be food secure than the households whose dwelling conditions were poorly maintained.