World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 13

World Food Policy

Fishing and Food Security

seasonal activity. Fishers who report to go
fishing year-round have got lower average
yields per trip than seasonal fishers. The
average total annual catch among fishing
households is estimated to be around
314 kg. Slightly more than half of this
amount is reported to be consumed by
the households, the rest is sold. Only one
of the households in our sample reports
to be engaged in aquaculture.

With regard to household
characteristics fishing households are
on average larger than non-fishing
households and they are less often headed
by females. Fishers have got lower incomes
than non-fishers; however, fishing is
well-distributed across the whole income
distribution (Figure B1 in Appendix B).
While there are no significant differences
in the production and consumption of
livestock, fishers have significantly lower
additional annual food expenditure per
capita than non-fishers. More details on
these figures may be found in Appendix
B.

Figure 1 depicts the most
important income sources in the sample
and compares the income from these
sources between fishers and non-fishers. It
becomes apparent that fishing households
have significantly more income from
subsistence activities than non-fishing
households because their in-kind income
from crops and hunting is higher. This
finding matches the observation from
above that the additional annual food
expenditure is significantly lower for
fishers than for non-fishers. Meanwhile,
non-fishing households have significantly
more income from business and offfarm employment which is mostly cash
income.

Figure 2 compares nutrition and
food security indicators of the whole
sample, fishers and non-fishers and tests
the difference between fishers and nonfishers in two-sided mean comparison
tests. The mean caloric intake in the
sample accounting for adult equivalents
is 2180 kcal per capita per day. Daily per
capita protein intake is on average 78
grams. Roughly 40% of the total daily
proteins and 20% of total calories come
from eating fish. Even though the FCS
only categorizes 10.6% of the overall
households in our sample as food insecure
at thresholds adjusted for high sugar
consumption (World Food Programme
2008), 30% of the households consume
<1800 kcal per adult equivalent per day,
a common threshold for undernutrition
(Svedberg 2002). Given that Lovon and
Mathiassen (2014) find that judgment on
food security in terms of adequate food
consumption according to FCS cut-off
points generally underestimates energy
deficiency these different findings are not
surprising. The average FCS for the whole
sample is just >53 points. The comparison
of fishers versus non-fishers in the whole
sample generally shows that fishing
households take in significantly more
calories and proteins per capita per day.
The same is true for calories and proteins
from fish. This difference in nutrition
variables between fishers and non-fishers
is confirmed by the significant differences
in the overall FCSs for the past week.

Table 1 depicts the make-up of
the FCSs for the whole sample as well
as for fishers and non-fishers. It uses
two-sided mean comparison tests to
assess the statistical significance of the
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