Climate Variability and Change: Implications for Household Food Security in North Kordofan State

ABSTRACT: This study assesses the potential economic impact of climate variability and change and socio-economic characteristics that hinders the household food security, in order to provide a meaningful insight and contribute to efforts aimed at ensuring increased food availability through sustainable domestic production and increased income from agricultural production. In Sudan general and North Kordofan State in particularly many researches and studies has been carried out in the area of household food security. Most of these studies have been indicative and either descriptive or have tended to limit themselves to the national level. The data on having national food balance is not sufficient to understand the food security dynamics in the country and no clear definition of food security and categorization at the farm household level. The study was conducted on the basis of cross-district analysis and extrapolates the results to all localities in North Kordofan State, Sudan. One hundred households were randomly selected for interview using pre-constructed questionnaire during 2011-2012 season. The study identifies choice for adaptation measure that farmers are using to mitigate potential environmental impacts from expected variables in climate change conditions. The study utilized the statistical descriptive and an econometric techniques to describe the trend of impacts of climate variability and change and socio-economic characteristics on food security in North Kordofan State. The results indicated that the climate variability and change and socio-economic are the important factors that affecting the production and productivity of crops in traditional rain-fed sector and household food security in the region. The results of the household food security indicator which calculate from Gini coefficient, descriptive and econometric model showed that the production fluctuated due to many factors such as seeds, area cultivated, and type of land, costs of production, rainfall distribution, and farm and off farm income, animal ownership and educational level. In General results show that 75% of households did not have sufficient food secure their needs, whereas 73% of households reported inadequate income to buy food. It should, however, be noted that the food quantities reported by most households interviewed in the study area are considered to be inadequate and very low as indicators to characterize the household food secure and household food insecure at the household level.