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Food Security Indicators and Framework for Use in the Monitoring and Evaluation of Food Aid Programs
The purpose of this handbook is to assist in the identification of food security indicators to be used in the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of US Title II food aid programs. Effective M&E systems are needed to ensure more efficient management of these increasingly scarce development resources and improve their ultimate impact on the lives and well-being of program beneficiaries. The handbook outlines a systematic process by which indicators can be identified in a context-specific fashion.
This approach to indicator identification begins in Section 2, which outlines a conceptual framework for understanding food security issues in a particular socioeconomic context. Section 2 begins with broad definitions of food aid and food security in general, describes Title II food aid program types, and looks at the policy context and stated objectives for US food aid programs. It explains how and why, over the past few years, the Agency has shifted the oversight focus of food aid programs from an emphasis on commodity monitoring and accountability to one which stresses the food security impacts of food aid programs on their intended beneficiaries. This new focus requires that performance monitoring and impact evaluation systems be introduced into Title II programs to permit USAID and cooperating sponsors to demonstrate more clearly their programs’ food security impacts.
Section 2 then lists some of the issues (such as poverty, ecological constraints, and inappropriate policies) which lead to the food insecurity of households and individuals in the developing world. It is important for program designers to identify precisely how different combinations of these issues combine to impact food security, not only for the design of interventions but also for the identification and interpretation of food security indicators. Diagram 2 outlines the USAID food security framework, highlighting the three dimensions of availability, access and utilization and the nature of their relationship to one another, and briefly describes their determinants.
In designing a program to address a particular dimension of food insecurity, it is necessary to work backwards from the immediate manifestations of food insecurity to the root causes of the problem. Understanding the causes of food insecurity necessarily requires a significant amount of information-gathering.
Once food security constraints and conditions have been identified, program managers can begin to develop a set of program goals and objectives. This is the first step towards developing performance indicators and establishing an effective M&E system, and Box 5 provides an example of a PVO effort to link its program goals and objectives to an explicit assessment of local food security conditions in Central America.
Section 3 provides a common set of concepts and terms, as well as different approaches to designing M&E systems. Table 1 looks at the specific information requirements for field staff, program managers, host governments and donors, and the program beneficiaries themselves. In addition to monitoring and evaluation, there are a number of other possible uses of food security-related information to support a variety of decision-making needs for program managers. Some of these uses are described in Box 6.
Section 4 defines and discusses specific indicators to be collected and used. Even though addressing a similar dimension of the food security problem, individual indicators may have vastly different requirements for data collection, measurement and interpretation. Section 4 defines an approach to the construction of a range of food security indicators, as well as a set of criteria against which to judge the utility of indicators for the purpose of a specific M&E system. The section on indicator construction looks at issues of measurement, classification and perspective. The section on how to choose among indicators gives guidelines for assessing the relevance, credibility, cost, comparability and time sensitivity of various indicators, as well as how to use these indicators.
Some food security indicators are too difficult or expensive to measure directly, in which case some type of indicator proxy must be used. The remainder of Section 4 looks at how to develop such alternative indicators.
