Fishing for food: evaluating the impact of food-producing livelihoods on food consumption and food security (805.8)

Food-producing livelihoods have the potential to improve nutrition, through direct consumption or indirectly through income. Yet, livelihood interventions rarely show any effects on nutrition indicators. In this study, we explore whether fishing households eat more fish and have higher food security than non-fishing households around Lake Victoria, Kenya. In 2010, we conducted a household survey of 111 randomly sampled households in a rural fishing community where half of all households fish. Our results suggest that households that fish have higher fish consumption in bivariate analyses (results were attenuated in multi-variate models). Households that fish were less likely to be food insecure, but the significance of the effect was compromised with the inclusion of socio-economic variables. Our results suggest that socio-economic factors may be more important than participation in food-producing livelihoods with regard to consumption of high quality foods. The results add to the literature examining the...