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Impact of HIV and AIDS on rural agricultural production and food security in Chivi and Makoni Districts
National NGO Food Security Network (FOSENET) and Trocaire
August 21, 2007

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Executive Summary

Background
The Food Security Network (FOSENET) is a consortium of 24 Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) involved in food security work in Zimbabwe. The network has been responding to food security needs in the country through three distinct ways, i.e., food relief, monitoring of the food security situation and advocacy on food security issues in the country. By the very nature of its operations FOSENET is facing challenges in responding to the food security situation especially in the presence of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. FOSENET believes that household food insecurity in southern Africa cannot be properly understood if HIV and AIDS are not considered in programming. It is against this background that FOSENET sought to conduct a study to assess the impacts of HIV and AIDS on rural agricultural production and food security. The major objective of this study is to contribute to improved national policy formulation by availing Zimbabwe specific data regarding the impacts of HIV and AIDS on rural agricultural production and food security.

Methodology
The study used a statistical software known as SPSS for analysis. Development Data employed this software largely because of its flexibility in conducting different types of analyses. Development Data also used the Household Vulnerability Index (HVI) as the main framework for analyzing data from the two districts. The HVI categorize households according to their varying degrees of vulnerability and also assess whether HIV and AIDS had greater impact on household vulnerability compared to other shocks. In using the HVI for measuring household vulnerability, the study also adopted the Sustainable Livelihoods framework (SLF) by analyzing how households are affected by HIV and AIDS and their ability to cope with such shocks.

Findings
The analysis managed to show that there are generally high levels of household vulnerability to the impacts of HIV and AIDS in Makoni and Chivi districts regardless of whether the households are classified by the community based targeting system as directly or indirectly affected. There are no significant differences in the vulnerability of the two districts with both of them falling in the acute level category. The HVI showed that major contributing factors to vulnerability in the two districts are financial and social capital assets of household livelihoods. Households with no access to credit, rely less on bank savings as a source of income as well as those which are not receiving any form of support from NGOs and local community are more vulnerable to the impacts of HIV and AIDS.

Findings also showed that approximately 5.5% of households that are classified as directly affected by HIV and AIDS are less vulnerable and hence fall in the coping level category and 90.3% households are more vulnerable to the impacts of HIV and AIDS but classified as indirectly affected by the pandemic. In light of scarce resources available for the fight against HIV and AIDS, such a targeting system results in the wastage of resources.

Analysis to verify if HIV and AIDS were significantly affecting maize productivity per capita showed that HIV and AIDS factors, i.e., number of sick members and orphans within a household, emerge among the significant factors that explain differences in maize productivity per capita across households in the study areas. These results imply that households with AIDS-related sickness and orphans of HIV and AIDS are likely to have lower productivity compared to those without. Results also showed that factors that are highly significant in explaining variations in food diversity across households include presence of AIDS-related sickness and expenditures on food and farming inputs. Households that have sick household members are likely to be less food diversified especially due to the financial burden that sicknesses bring to household's financial resources.

Findings also showed that the majority of coping level households, i.e., approximately 70%, are adult male-headed households whilst the remainder are adult female headed households. More female headed households fall under the acute level of vulnerability compared to male headed households. All of the child and elderly headed households also fall under the acute level of vulnerability. These results serve to confirm that child and elderly headed households are marginally disadvantaged socio-economic groups within any society.

There is a general asset poverty in the studied communities especially livestock assets. Results show that acute level households have a high asset poverty compared to coping level households. Approximately 44.4% acute level households do not own any cattle compared to only 8.7% coping level households. For those households that own at least one cattle 34.8% of coping level households own more than 4 cattle compared to only 14.6% acute level households. These results show the extent of livestock assets poverty in acute level households.

HIV and AIDS are reducing the number of meals and the diversity of the food eaten by affected and vulnerable households. A higher percentage of coping level households (56.5%) have three meals per day compared to only 22.7% of acute level households. The majority of acute level households (72%) did have two meals. Results also showed that a higher percentage of acute level households had an average to low food diversity compared to the majority of coping level households that had an average to high food diversity. Findings also established that the majority of households in the sample did not have any access to credit although it seems more acute level households compared to coping level household, did not have any access to credit. For households that had access to credit more female headed households were accessing credit compared to male headed households. Most households that were assessing credit are reported to have been part of a community or formal credit scheme.

Household expenditures in the study community are mostly on food and this is very common in acute level households where approximately 80% households spend most of their financial resources on food compared to 56.5% for coping level households. Investment in education and agriculture is quite minimal for acute level households compared to coping level households making these households more vulnerable to the impacts of HIV and AIDS. A closer look at acute level households revealed that more female headed households spend more on school fees and health expenses compared to the male headed households. Given an opportunity for additional financial resources households in the study communities indicated various new expenditures that they would want to engage in. Whilst a larger percentage of coping level households indicated that they would to increase their expenditure on farming inputs, savings and income generating projects respectively, most acute level household indicated that they would spend their additional income on food and farming inputs. This result gives an indication of the level of vulnerability in acute level households.

Households that receive support from any source which increase the immediate availability of food to the household are less vulnerable to the impacts of HIV and AIDS. Findings revealed that the majority of food support in the two districts is being rendered by NGOs. Households reported very little food support programmes coming from the government and the local community. Most coping level households are in NGO food support programmes. They also receive various other supports from the NGOs such as savings schemes, farm inputs, education and income generating projects. The majority of acute level households receive little support from NGOs but are members of various church groups where they get emotional and spiritual support.

Findings from the study also revealed mixed results when considering impacts of HIV and AIDS on natural capital. Whilst there was very little evidence of the impact of HIV and AIDS on land utilization, the pandemic seemed to impact on the use of forest products. Results indicated that coping level households were most vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic as far as land utilization is concerned as more of these households failed to cultivate all of their land due to AIDS related sickness within their households compared to acute level households. Results also showed that more acute level households are resorting to the forest for survival through cutting down trees and selling of firewood compared to coping level households.

There was very little difference across gender dimensions and districts as far as strategies that households were employing to cope with food shortages. Most of the identified strategies were short term and bound to be detrimental to the households in the long run. Major strategies used by both coping and acute level households includes reliance on less expensive and preferred foods, borrowing from neighbors and friends, reducing number of meals per day, limiting portion size at meal times and harvesting immature crops. These strategies were employed by both coping and acute level households. There are other strategies employed by a smaller percentage of acute level households such as begging for food in the community and sending household members away to relatives and friends so as to reduce household food requirements. These strategies were used by less than 4.5% of acute level households.

Recommendations

Some of the major recommendations emanating from this study are highlighted below:

Observation 1: Makoni and Chivi district have average vulnerabilities that fall under the acute level of household vulnerability.

Recommendation 1: With rapid social protection responses acute level households can be resuscitated. These social protection responses should be informed by vulnerability analysis of the two districts. Basically since the study has managed to single out major sources of vulnerability, these should then inform intervention programmes meant to reduce the vulnerability of the two districts to the impacts of HIV and AIDS.

Observation 2: Community Based Targeting system for identifying household that are directly affected by HIV and AIDS is targeting some households that are less vulnerable and hence should not be targeted and also excluding some households that are very vulnerable to the impacts of HIV and AIDS.

Recommendation 2: There is a need to come up with a targeting mechanism that reduces inclusion errors as this will improve the use resources. Certainly an inclusion error of less than 1% is desirable. Community based targeting need to go under a verification process with some other independent system to check for inclusion errors.

Observation 3: Household vulnerability is emanating from two major sources, i.e., financial and social capital assets of household livelihoods.

Recommendation 3: Programmes need to be put in place to strengthen the financial assets of affected households and thus reduce the economic burden resulting from impacts of HIV and AIDS. There is an opportunity to scale up existing community and formal credit scheme projects as these have already proven to be an effective way of increasing financial resources to member households. Programmes should also be designed to strengthen the social fabric within communities and built upon community relationships and thus improving the existing social support networks. Certainly there is a room to extent the role that is being played by churches in the different communities to also include intervention programmes targeted at vulnerable groups of the society. This might involve capacity building of the churches so that they could organize and prepare themselves to be partners in the implementation of development programmes. Already there exist some models that can offer learning experiences such as the Diocese of Mutare Community Care Programme being implemented in some parts of Manicaland province.

Observation 4: HIV and AIDS are two of the many factors that affect maize productivity and food diversity within the studied communities.

Recommendation 4: It is not possible to consider HIV and AIDS in isolation from other socio economic phenomena that affects agricultural production and food security in rural households. On the other hand it is detrimental for any development processes to ignore the effects of HIV and AIDS considering them as negligible. Efforts should be made to come up with wholistic approaches to food security that integrates all the different factors affecting agricultural production and food security. This will ensure chances of successful and sustainable intervention programmes.

Observation 5: All child and elderly headed households fall under the acute level of vulnerability

Recommendation 5: Social protection policies that focus on these disadvantaged groups of the society need to be crafted so as to assist them fight both their internal and external vulnerability. Female headed households should also be considered as a disadvantaged group in the society. There is need to sensitize any development programme to consider how it will contribute to the livelihoods of the disadvantaged groups of the society.

Observation 6: Most acute level households indicated that they would use any additional income to buy food

Recommendation 6: This observation is important especially when considering new intervention programmes targeted for the study communities. Any efforts to assist households reduce their food insecurity in Makoni and Chivi districts, which do not address the immediate food requirements of these communities is likely to register very little success. Immediate household food requirements take precedence over any other activity that might improve household's food security in the long run. Efforts should be made to ensure that programmes that address household food requirements in the two districts are put in place.

Observation 7: The study design was cross sectional in nature thus making it virtually impossible to compare differences across time.

Recommendation 7: Resources permitting, it will be interesting to redo the same survey in three or four years to come so as to establish time series data and a basis for comparison. This will make it possible to siphon out impacts that attributable to HIV and AIDS in a better way.

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