Characterising food insecurity in pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Uganda using a consumption coping strategy index

We explore the utility of a consumption coping strategy index (CSI) in characterising and assessing the factors influencing household food insecurity. We assessed 53 pastoral and 197 agro-pastoral households in Nakasongola and Nakaseke districts of Uganda, examining the use of 27 consumption coping strategies over a recall time of two 30-day periods, one at the start of a dry season in 2012 and one at the start of a rainy season in 2013. Four categorical food insecurity status measures were established - food secure (CSI 0 to 5) and mildly (CSI 6 to 20), moderately (CSI 21 to 42) and extremely (CSI >42) food insecure. For the dry season, the mean CSI was 29.4 ± 2.59 and 33.6 % of households were food secure, while for the rains, mean CSI was 33.1 ± 2.30 and 14.0 % of households were food secure. The combination of livelihood system, land holdings, number of livestock owned and belonging to a social network explained 9.4 % to 10 % of the variance in household food insecurity for agro-pastoralists, but variance for pastoralists was not explained by these factors. While the only highly significant factor associated with increasing household food insecurity in the dry season was low landholdings, in the rainy season, it was pastoral livelihood, low livestock holdings for agro-pastoralists and non-involvement in social networks. While our model identified a number of factors important in describing household food insecurity, it explained only about 10 % of the variance