Determinants of Household Food Security: A Comparative Analysis of Eastern and Non-Eastern Indonesia

Abstract

Food security at the national, regional and district level do not ensure food security at household level. The facts that although at a national, regional and districts level the status of food security is assured, but in the region and districts is still found the food insecure households. Moreover, domination of Indonesian food policies which mostly emphasize in rice production and keep the price of rice remained low lead to the provinces with high in rice production but also high problems of hunger and malnutrition. In 2009, Indonesian Food Security Council issued a Food Security and Vulnerability Atlas (FSVA) which stated that there were 100 districts in Indonesia, which were most vulnerable to food insecurity based on the composite food security index. Of the 100 districts, 79 of which (79 percent) were located in Eastern Indonesia. This shows that the implemented food policy in Indonesia is still emphasized in the rice production and have not able to tackle, especially the problems of availability, access, utilization and stability of food security. Therefore, handling of food security in Indonesia must involve all factors, including food availability, food accessibility, food utilization, and food stability simultaneously. Based on the above description, the objectives of this study are: 1) To analyze the condition of household food security in Eastern Indonesia compared to non-Eastern Indonesia 2) To analyze the determinants of household food security in Eastern Indonesia compared to non-Eastern Indonesia. The data used in this study are SUSENAS module of consumption and expenditure which was collected in July 2008 and Susenas kor 2008. Both data cover 285,904 households from Eastern and non-Eastern region. The status of household food security is identified by two indicators: per adult-equivalent calorie availability and per adult-equivalent share of expenditure. Ordinal logistic regression used as the method to analyze the data. On the average, the calorie availability of households in Eastern and non-Eastern Indonesia has been already more than the requirements to be food secure households (80 percent). However, the share of food expenditures is also still more than 60 percent lead to the food vulnerable households. The households with this characteristic are susceptible to the shock. The problem of food vulnerability is not only applied in Eastern Indonesia, but also in non-Eastern Indonesia. The factors of expenditure equivalent, gender of household head, age of household head, education of household head, main occupation of household head, household location, and household size are all significant determinants of household food security in Eastern and non-Eastern Indonesia. The difference is in the factors of access to electricity which is not significant in Eastern Indonesia and access to loan and access to safe drinking water which are only significant in non-Eastern Indonesia.