Agrarian transition and food security in the village of Nabha, Central Bekaa.

Abstract

Agrarian transition is a global phenomenon affecting most countries. It is manifested by the decrease in the contribution of agriculture to GDP, the decrease in the number of agricultural workers, the detachment of agrarians from their land, and the change in livelihoods. Lebanon, a developing country, is still experiencing an agrarian transition. This is because factors like climate change, water scarcity, cash crops, and the state’s sectoral investment priorities and development policies have been to the detriment of rural areas and agrarian livelihoods. These agrarian transformations can leave the rural population vulnerable to food insecurity, as both access to food and its availability may be negatively affected by the shrinkage of the agricultural sector. However, mitigation strategies like migration and livelihood diversification have been adopted by agrarians to alleviate poverty, and food and nutrition insecurity. Studies carried out on the linkages between agrarian transformation and food security are returning inconclusive results, possibly because of the diversity of indicators that have been used. It is noteworthy that most of these indicators do not consider the nutrition dimension of food security. This research aimed to study the main drivers of agrarian transition in the village of Nabha, in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate of Lebanon. It examined the effect of this transition, manifested by livelihood diversification, on food and nutrition security. A sample consisting of 100 randomly selected households, or 40percent of the local population, was surveyed. Four questionnaires were administered: a livelihood qualitative questionnaire covering the drivers of the agrarian transition and changes in livelihoods during the period of 1960 – 2018, the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) to study food security, Food Consumption Score (FCS) to study diet diversity and quality, and a Household Expenditure Module as a proxy of income to study the expenditure on food. The results showed that mos