Multidimensional food security index (MFSI)
Clearly, the access variables were the most important for our MFSI and
are mostly related to socioeconomic conditions of the population.
Monetary poverty is a historical and widespread problem for the Caatinga
population and as well as in other parts of the world, it is among the
most important drivers of food insecurity
(Fan & Brzeska, 2016;
Nahid et al., 2021). On the other hand, the role of
socioeconomic inequality is not clear but wealth concentration can also
mean generalised low access to food
(Klassen & Murphy,
2020). The interplay of the other dimensions and their variation in the
degree of importance between years precludes the search for general
patterns and lead to the notion that a great number of factors can shift
in importance to determine food security over time
(FAO, 2022). One
important lesson is the prevalence of access variables within the
dimension of the index we created. Stability of food production also had
some influence and highlighted the importance of collective association
of farmers and the long-term protection of water resources
(Parraguez-Vergaraet al., 2018). Surprisingly, neither utilisation nor
availability variables contributed significantly to our index,
reinforcing the rationale that food security is less influenced by food
production or capacity to process food
(Barrett, 2010). Yet,
our results concur that access is far more important than the other
dimensions to determine a population’s food security
(Barrett, 2010; FAO,
2020) even in high-income countries, such as the U.S.
(O’Hara & Toussaint,
2021).