| dc.description.abstract | One of the most significant challenges for improved contingency planning in relation to food security is
availability of timely, up-to-date and accurate data for planners and decision makers. Such information
needs to be available to government officials, donors, non-governmental organizations and other
interested parties in a comprehensive, consistent, regular and easy to understand format. This study
attempts to develop a food security monitoring system based on the staple food markets in Matiliku
division of Makueni district. The study identifies and establishes the common staple food items whose
prices are monitored at markets centres also established by the study. The market, being a surface over
which demand and supply at a specific location is expressed, was used to establish villages that are
attracted to a specific market, thus forming clusters. Therefore, by monitoring prices of commodities
within a market, the population affected by such prices fluctuations can be known, on the basis of the
villages forming a cluster around such a market.
In the event of there being a famine, the targeting the affected vulnerable populations can correctly be
taken those that fall within the village clusters under the monitored market.
The food Security Monitoring System developed has four components that are integrated. They feed into
and complement each other to produce situation indicator maps and integrated graphs that together give a
consolidated statement on the food security status of the population being monitored.
The geographic information system formed the main component of data integration and analysis.
The maps, showing the food security situation based on the prices of the staple foods in the respective
market that has spatial influence over a cluster of villages and the time series graphs indicating the
relationship between rainfall estimates and the prices are the core outputs of the system that decision
makers would use to support their decisions. | en |
