Livelihood, culture and patterns of food consumption in rural Burkina Faso

Many factors interact to shape household food security and consumption and these must be analyzed together to build understandings of how they interact in particular contexts. In the Sahelian context, we report on a study investigating how productive resources (access to capital, land, labor), livelihood choices, food cultural norms and location together affect household food consumption by 120 rural households in the provinces of Yatenga and Seno in Burkina Faso. These two provinces have quite different cultural and socioeconomic conditions. Data was generated from an initial interview focused on household resource access followed by monitoring of household food consumption using 24-h and 7-day recall interviews over 11 months. Grain consumption was estimated along with the frequency of milk, meat, vegetable, oil/fats, and fruit consumption. Food security is shaped by the pathways through which households gain access to food. Surveyed household report low levels of self provisioning of grain (averaging around 50% of need) with different seasonal patterns of grain purchases based on cash sources. Principal components analysis finds significant degree of co-variation of food consumption parameters. Regression analysis finds that disposable wealth and cultural norms against milk consumption are positively and negatively associated with food consumption, controlling for land and labor access. Location (province) and ethnic identity (related or not to Mossi culture) are found to be important factors affecting household proclivity and ability to manage livestock which in turn leads to greater consumption of animal products (milk and meat) and greater savings to mobilize during times of grain deficit.