Shocks And Coping Strategies On Households' Food Security In Poverty Areas Of Rural China

During the 1970 s,Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO)first put forward the concept of food security,after that its connotation and extension have been changed,focusing from macro to micro,from quantity to quality,from the food supply to food sustainability.In this process,with the growing of global climate change,the world economic fluctuations and lacking of labor force,domestic and foreign researchers pay more attention to food security related problems.Based on the field survey data of 1368 households in 6 counties of Yunnan,Guizhou,Shaanxi provinces conducted in 2012 and 2015,this paper studies on households' food security status and using VEP model to measure their food security vulnerability;descriptive analyzes which shock does households face,how's the impact on their production and living;then,using two-stage least squares method and multivariate logit method to do research on how's the impact of shocks on household food security from the static and dynamic points,trying to answer which shock has impact on household food security and how's the impact;Finally,using the probit model to analyze which coping strategies will households adopted in face of shocks,what is the factors influence their strategy choice.Accordingly,the study finds that: first,households' food security vulneralbility is not high.Of the sample households,209 are food insecurity,accounting for 15.3%,23 are households with high vulnerability,including 16 in food insecure group and 7 in food secure group;The characteristic of households in high vulneralbility and food insecurity group are the worst,next is the households in high vulneralbility and food security group.Second,most households suffer from shocks and they all have significant impact on them.79% of the sample households experienced at least one shock,mainly the bio-shocks,the most shocks households suffer from is drought,flood,hotwind,illnesshh,lack employment and high agricultural input.More than 85.0% of them think that has impact on their production and income,and also on food security situation.The households in Shanxi Province had face the heavier shocks;the poor's heavier shocks is lack of labor force,and the wealthier's is the high cost of agricultural inputs;Planting and breeding households are more vulnerable to shocks.Third,shocks have significant effects on households' food security by empirical study.Earthquake and wildlife have significant influence on their food security.The impact to the poorer group is significant.From the impact of dynamic effect on farmers' food safety,shocks increased the difficulty of farmers getting out of food insecure and also increased the probability of food security people getting into food insecurity.Finally,most households have coping strategies.Farmers hit by disasters,economic and social shocks,and having a higher per capita income will urge them to use coping strategies,and households with different types of charecteristics will use different coping strategies.According to the above research conclusions,suggestions has been put forward,hoping that these suggestions will help farmers improve shocks situation,enhance them to increase coping strategies,get rid of the food insecure,and realize the strategic task of poverty alleviation works in China as soon as possible.First,the government need to consummate the disaster emergency safeguard mechanism,second,to improve the ability of social security,third,to ease the economic cycle fluctuation,forth,to engage more stakeholders participating in poverty alleviation,finally,to promote households' coping capacity,formulating differentiated,more targeted measures,to meet the different needs of specific groups.