Time allocation/activity analysis/child care (4)
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Dear Bill,
The thesis of lowered nutrition of households which your study pres-
ents would appear not unexpected, especially in countries where eco-
nomic reforms are also in place. Typically in these economies, like
in Nigeria, the decrease in the real rather than nominal value of
farm income, occasioned endogenously by input price deregulation
policies and exogenously by the exchange rate changes have been seen
to dampen the gains from cash crop expansion.
Therefore, 'demand for cash income' (manifested as in shifts from
subsistence to commercial production) is to meet the rapidly rising
cost of farm and non-farm goods and services, including foods not
grown. As my study in Nigeria in 1991 showed, even though there was
incremental production and output and incremental income, up to 250%
over the pre-SAP period, of food crops alongside cash crops, since
farm prices were generally enhanced, farm households were observed to
sell more of all types of food crops grown rather than use them as
home food as before.
Data showed that there was systematic decrease in the consumption of
all protein foods like livestock products, legumes and most cereals
while there was increase in the consumption of cassava, coco-yam,
vegetable crops. Thus cash crop expansion in a market-led policy en-
vironment led simultaneously to food crop expansion, but as a buffer
for the rising cost profile of all types of production.
It has been shown that in peasant households in most of Africa, when
food rationing becomes endemic due to many reasons ranging from sea-
sonal hunger, famine or from a 'vent for (market) surplus', as in the
Nigerian case children and women bear the brunt of shortages due to
the cultural entitlement system. Also because 'workers' are rates
above 'non-workers', children and women for whom the perceived value
of labour is low, their food entitlement would imply lowered nutri-
tional standards in this scenario.
The above study was conducted to show the impacts of Structural Ad-
justment Programme on Agriculture and Rural Life.
Bola Akanji, Ph.D.
Snr. Research Fellow
Agriculture and Rural Dev. Dept.
Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER)
PMB 5, Ibadan, NIGERIA
mailto:akanji@ibadan.skannet.com
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