Rainfall Variability and Farm Households Food Insecurity in Burkina Faso: The Nonfarm Enterprises as Coping Strategy

This study explores the impact of rainfall variability on farm households food insecurity and how participation in nonfarm enterprises may contribute to mitigate such effect. The ordinary least square and copula switching regressions are performed on the data of the 2014 Multi-sectoral Continuous Survey (EMC-BF). It appears that both short-term and long-term rainfall variability are important determinants of farm households food insecurity level in Burkina Faso. An increase in the rainfall average significantly reduce the level of farm households food insecurity. However, the effect of a short-term decrease in rainfall is only significant among the rural farm households indicating these latter dependences to rainfall for their livelihood compared to urban farm households. Furthermore, the study reveals nonfarm enterprises reduce farm households food insecurity. Therefore, operating a nonfarm enterprise may be a strategy to cope with rainfall variability effects among farm households in Burkina Faso. Acknowledgement : I acknowledge