DOES TECHNICAL SUPPORT HELP TO IMPROVE FOOD SECURITY? A CASE STUDY OF TANZANIAN FISH FARMING HOUSEHOLDS  

Akua Akuffo*, Kwamena Quagrainie
Department of Agricultural Economics
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
aakuffo@purdue.edu

A study was conducted in Tanzania in the spring of 2015 to identify nutritional improvements of households engaged in fish farming practices in selected communities in Tanzania. The study assessed the benefits that manifest themselves in nutritional outcomes from households engaged in fish farming in Tanzania (Morogoro and Mbeya regions). Fish is an important source of protein and essential micronutrients for many African households and participation in fish farming could have both direct effect through fish consumption, and indirect pathway through an income effect for nutritional impact.  The study used the World Food Program's (WFP) Food Consumption Score (FCS) measures to assess nutritional quality with a target on fish. The sample was 55 with 33 fish farming households and 21 non fish farming households as the control group. An Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) analysis of the data showed household income, residing in an urban area and the index for wealth positively affect dietary diversity and nutritional quality. The major assumption for the study was that fish farming households consumed fish from their fish farms as well as sell some of the fish to provide an income to buy other more quality food as compared to non-fish farming households. This assumption was however not supported by the results as the control group had a higher FCS (58) than the fish farming households (56). Based on this results, this study is seeking to measure the impact of technical support improvements of a household's food security. The analysis will be done using an Ordered Logit model with the dependent variable being the three categories of FCS namely poor, borderline and acceptable with household demographics and technical support as the independent variables.  

Expected Results

The major assumptions here are that all that sample is all fish farmers and they all live in the rural where most of the fish farming occurs.

We expect the results to show the following:

∙βFish farming households will have improved Food consumption scores.

∙βParticipation in fish farming will increase the probability of a household moving from one category of food security to a higher category.