Assessing "Dependency"- Food Security and the Impact of Food Aid on Livelihoods in Mugu

Foreword In mainstream development geography, the focus of research has recently on megacities. In Germany alone, three major research programmes are currently investigating these highly dynamic spaces which will be home for more than half of the population in the very near future. Such a focus, however, has created a situation where the rural spaces are neglected, particularly those with fragile environments. Research has also failed to look at the livelihoods of those who are left behind in their villages because they lack the capabilities and social networks that can make migration possible.

In this book, Miriam Bishokarma, a young geographer from Bonn University (now Zurich), has looked at the vulnerable livelihoods of high mountain farmers in the far West of Nepal. She has put her focus on the food security of village populations. Her research demonstrates the everyday food crises which these people face. They depend on the external supply of food, including provisions of the World Food Programme.

Miriam Bishokarma's central question is to what extent these farmers have become dependent on external supplies of food, and how geographers can disentangle the complex structures and processes that determine the state of food dependency. The reader is taken to a remote village in the mid Western mountains of Nepal, where the author has done in-depth field work. She concludes that the people of Ruga village depend on various sources of food, including outside supply by the World Food Programme. However, this food dependency has not destroyed the basic livelihood structures on which the village people base their livelihoods.

Introduction The first travelled to Mugu and the Karnali zone during internship United the beginning of 2009. Whole the area was covered with slim snow cover-it was the only snow region would see that winter. Although had already spend some years in Nepal and travelled different places, the poverty and prevailing hunger of the population shocked me. The food aid provided by WFP seemed be the only to safe people from starvation. Some villagers nearby the district headquarter Gamgadi supported this impression. Their own agricultural production was too low due to recurrent droughts and less productivity the small plots of land, added to the fact that many goods the market were unaffordable to buy. Before we left the village saw one couple ploughing their field - after the little snow-fall they were still hoping to grow some food on their plot. This surprised me: these people were given food aid, so why should they, despite the bad prospects production, plough their field instead of relying WFP rice? Was the food provided not sufficient? This scene the couple desperately ploughing their field contradicted the widespread "lazy" peasants waiting for the helicopter rice. It peasants, see any value engaging agriculture, and prefer eating rice instead of locally grown food as millet buckwheat.

Yet, this perception prevails newspaper articles the capital, often by persons, who only spend little time the regions they are writing about, such Mugu. The prevailing discourse blames food aid agencies such the WFP for changing recipients' habits, thereby preventing them from growing traditional such millet.

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