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Food Production (Availability) (Field and Farm)
At the field and farm level, this food security metric focuses on food that is made available due to the new intervention. The measure focuses on converting this output into calories as the measurement unit per area of land used to produce them. Data on production and area used for producing food items may be collected by survey or field measurement.
How to operationalize the metric
Method of data collection and data needed to compute the method:
Following are the data needed to compute this metric:
- Data on area used to produce the food item
- Total amount of food that is produced on this area
- Food composition tables that are available showing the calories in the food item (FAO, 2016)
The data on area and production can be obtained either from survey or field measurements (GPS for area measurement) or crop cuts (see productivity section on yields recall).
Unit of analysis:
Following are the ways to calculate of calories of food item per hectare:
- Obtain the mass of the food item produced and multiply it by the number of calories contained in 100 g of this food item.
- Divide the total calories obtained by the area in hectares to obtain the metrics: calorie per hectare. Please note that area is at times reported in various units, e.g., acres, ropes, poles. Conversion units should be used to convert these into hectares.
Limitations regarding estimating and interpreting:
The measure at the field and farm level, if done on an experimental plot, may lack the data on household members (consumption aspect) and may not reflect the nonlinearity in consumption demands at the household. For example, a household of five adults will require more total calories than a household with two adults and three children.