Depth of Food Insecurity and Malnutrition Status in Traditional Rain Fed Sector in Sudan

Sudan is endowed with vast and diverse agricultural resource base that provides various means of sustaining livelihood. Although there is sufficient production in some seasons, but it cannot achieve food and nutrition security for the whole population. Food security depends in Agriculture as a backbone for food availability among the farm households in Blue Nile State, which make it difficult to obtain their sufficient food needs from their low production. The overall objective of this research is to measure food insecurity and malnutrition situation within the farm household in the state through specific objectives to: Identify the main livelihood systems among households, analyze the food and nutrition insecurity and to identify prevalence of undernourished and the depth of food insecurity. The adopted research methodology started by developing a questionnaire to gather the primary data supported by secondary data from different sources. The selection of the studied area (Blue Nile state), is based on the fact that the situation need to be deeply investigated for better analysis and better interventions. The analysis based on two analytical methods; descriptive analysis and modeling by using ADePT – FSM, to reach the results that satisfy the objectives of the research. Sets of indicators are analyzed to get a real picture on the food and nutrition situation in the state, some among others are; production, food consumption, coping mechanisms, Household Diet Diversity Score, estimation of nutrient intake by income quantiles and estimation depth of food deficit and prevalence of undernourished people. The main results obtained by the analysis indicated that during the hazards the households practice some coping mechanism to adapt the situation. It is found that at state level 45% do not practice any of the coping mechanisms which means that they can withstand the shocks, while 23% use low coping mechanism, 19% and 14% use medium and high coping mechanisms respectively. Low diet diversity exists among the households which illustrated that 5.64 and 4,65 food groups were consumed (with and without sugar) respectively and this is one of the drivers of malnutrition status. When analyzing the nutrition in the different income group, it is revealed that the lowest macro nutrient intake is estimated within the lowest income quantile; 54,57, 342,32 and 37.57 g/ person/day for protein, carbohydrate and fats respectively, while the results for the middle-income quantile showed an estimation of 62.92, 363,48 and 48.66 for proteins, carbohydrates and fats respectively. The highest income group which consume diversified food shows a result of 118.71, 643,06 and 90.02 g/ person/ day, and this support them with enough energy to maintain a good life. The results of Prevalence of Undernourishment indicate the levels of undernourished between the farm HH as 26.61 which is considered high. Depth of food deficit is found to be very high (257.7 kcal/person/day), compared to FAO standard (177.2). To improve the deteriorated food and nutrition situation in the state a number of policies and interventions have been proposed by the researcher including transformation the subsistence agriculture into a productive enterprise through forming series of agricultural policies that aimed at improving production, markets performances, post-harvest process and credit facilities to enhance availability and access. In terms of utilization; improving nutrition status by diversification and awareness raising. Nevertheless, the focusing in children’s feeding and improving food cultures by enhancing the production and manufacturing of nutritive products especially for children and other targeted groups.

Sudan economy is agricultural-based. The overwhelming proportions of the population live in rural areas depend upon subsistence farming for survival. In spite of its wide and diverse agricultural resource base relative to population size, Sudan's economic performance is substantially based on agriculture that should maintain food, nutrition security and livelihood.
The agricultural sector is almost totally dependent on rainfall.
This heavy dependency on rain-fed agriculture renders the majority of Sudan powerless in the face of erratic and unpredictable rainfall.
As a result, the majority of the poor are severely affected by drought. This performance is below its potentials and this provides a general expiation to the puzzle that some of its population have no reliable accessibility to sufficient quantity and quality of nutritious food. Although there is sufficient production in some seasons, but it cannot achieve food security for the whole population due to multidimensional factors affecting food security, include: a) The people live below the poverty line, are perpetually in a state of food insecurity. b) Productivity decline due to physical, biotic, institutional and socio-economic factors.
c) The harsh climatic conditions such as low rainfalls, droughts and fragile ecosystem.

d) Conflicts and insecurity.
e) Increasing rate of human and animal population.

f)
Damage to soil, trees and pasture caused by overstocking and over grazing. h) The soaring prices for food and non-food items corresponding to low income levels.

i)
Degradation of the resource base due to mono -cropping, erosion, encroachment by sand dunes, desertification etc.

j)
Poor cultural practices and poor food diversification. This paper aims to deeply analyse the food insecurity and the influencing food deficits in Blue Nile State and cover some linkages that have not been investigated in the previous researches (few researches analysed the food security situation and linked it with the malnutrition status as one of the main outcomes of food insecurity). More or less to propose policies to contribute in resolving the deteriorated situation based on the results of the analysis.

Objectives of the study
The overall objective of this research is to measure food insecurity and malnutrition situation within the farm household in Blue Nile state.
The specific objectives to:

Data collection
Two types of data were collected: primary and secondary data. Borderline, >35 Acceptable (WFP thresholds)

c)
Coping Mechanisms: CM starts from low to high coping mechanisms (WFP, 2008). The coping mechanism was developed by the World Food Programme, it is commonly used to measure the frequency and severity of coping mechanisms.

d) Household Diet Diversity Score (HDDS):
HDDS is defined as the number of unique food consumed by HHs members over a given period, it has been validated to be a useful approach for measuring household food access. The value of this variable ranges from 0 to 12. HDDS (0 -12) Total number of food groups consumed by members of the household. Values for A through L will be either "0" or "1". Sum (A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I + J + K + L), the average HDDS indicator is calculated for the sample population.

I.
The ADePT -FSM module is used to test the Depth of food insecurity and undernourishment of population in the selected areas. It is a data set and synthetic data drawn from idealized model.

II.
Many indicators can be analyzed to estimate food insecurity and malnutrition using ADePT-FSM module in order to ensure the analysis of different variables and to determine the interrelationship between food and nutrition situation.

III.
ADePT-FSM does not limit its outcome to statistics belonging to the "access" dimension of food security, namely caloric intake and macronutrients consumption are considered.

IV.
The end result of this analysis by this model is to estimate the depth of food insecurity and prevalence of undernourished HHs.

V.
Indicators  The probability distribution framework is: Where PoU represent the probability that an individual randomly selected within a population is found to be undernourished; In Altadamon locality cowpea production is about 28 tons and tomato is cultivated in ELrosairis with average production estimated as 12 tons.

e) Insignificant variation among households in the selected
localities (P< 1). Generally, the level of production for both food and cash crops seem to be very low. Curr

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In summary nutrient intake for the lowest group is the least for the three nutrients which cause deficiency in these nutrients within the group (Table 9).

(CV):
It is estimated that the coefficient of variation due to income in Blue Nile State is lower than the total sample and the one due to other factors (socio economic) is the same, because the state is affected by factors occurred in the total sample (Table 10).

Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU):
a b) The results from the field survey indicates the levels of undernourished between the farm HH as 26.61 which is considered high (Table 11).  (Table 12).  c) The coping mechanisms frequencies revealed that the farm households were suffering from food insecurity and cannot be resilient to shocks. food deficit occurs mainly due to hazards, low income, low productivity and insufficient resources.

d)
To recognize the severity of the situation and the drivers is important to implement planning for intervention in order to enhance the access to food which is hindered by low income within the farm households compared to the global standards which is 1 USD / P / Day. e) Food insecurity and malnutrition exist mainly driven by a number of determinants, which contribute to higher deficiency in energy, macronutrient intake and hence influence the nutritional status of the persons within the households who are relying on one or two food groups and this cause nutrient deficiency.

f)
The outcome showed that households in the selected localities are mostly suffer from food insecurity reflected in the high depth of food deficit and high rates of undernourished people.
g) The overall conclusion is that Blue Nile State is falling under food and nutrition insecurity (although it is considered as one of the main rainfed areas). This situation can be implied to the traditional sector in Sudan because of the similarities in the livelihoods, production and consumption patterns.

i)
Enhance the decision-making abilities of the femaleheaded households concerning food production and consumption.

j)
Efforts to improve nutrition must form the outset attack the detrimental reinforcing linkages among food insecurity, diseases, poor sanitation, inadequate education and malnutrition.

k) Rehabilitation and building of rural access roads is
important to open up vast areas in the country to enhance food access, as well resilient marketing systems which will enhance food access.

l)
Improve Post harvest techniques (transport, storage, handling, processing and marketing).to enhance food availability in all times.
m) The overall recommendation is to make the interventions oriented to humanitarian-development nexus to sustain food security and improve nutrition status.

n)
It is highly recommended for future researches to deepen the analysis on some indicators and get evidence-based results from different angles.