The Determinants of Food Insecurity in Turkana

Twenty seven years after the publication of the widely-acclaimed work “the socio-economic determinants of food consumption and production in rural Sierra Leone”, the agricultural household model used by John Strauss re-mains a powerful tool for the analysis of household behaviour in low-income agricultural economies. This current paper uses data from a household budget survey and the framework provided by the agricultural household model to investigate the determinants of household food insecurity in Tur-kana County of Kenya. It establishes that environmental factors, geography and household characteristics, specifically demography, play a significant role in explaining food insecurity among the people of this community. A complementary study is required to deconstruct further the role of produc-tion-related characteristics such as land size and land quality, input prices and mechanization since the data used could not establish any clear associa-tion with per capita calorie intake in Turkana. Relevance to Development Studies Food security has been a major development challenge to countries within the horn of Africa for a very long time. Lack of accurate and reliable information about the food insecure populations has been identified as one of the reasons why policy and interventions have not been very successful in this region. It is my conviction that this study will provide insight and the necessary information towards the solution and development of the Turkana Community.