Maxwell, S.

This paper reports an investigation of possible disincentive effects associated with food for work in a locality in North Omo, Ethiopia. The focus is on disincentives to agricultural innovation. Three options to test a disincentive hypothesis are presented, two being rejected as inappropriate to the locality (due to pervasiveness of food for work and constraints on modelling techniques). Therefore a rapid attitude survey was undertaken in just over 24 hours.

This paper reports the methods and results of two ranking exercises. Both aimed to investigate (i) the range of perceived income-earning opportunities, (ii) the criteria they use to select options, (iii) the ranking of alternative options. Two different methods were used in the two exercises, yielding slightly different results. Overall they showed that farmers are aware of and practice a large number of income-enhancing options, both in and out of agriculture. They use a sophisticated set of criteria for choosing between them. Food for work ranks high on most of these criteria.

This paper examines the application of Rapid Rural Appraisal techniques to assess the causes, dimensions and characteristics of food insecurity. A procedure referred to as a Rapid Food Security Assessment (RFSA) was carried out during November 1989 in nine communities in North Sudan using a methodology based on the 'Sondeo' approach to RRA. Interviews were carried out with representative households in the various communities using a checklist as the basis for an unstructured conversation.

This is an extensive report investigating emergency food aid and the integration between this and regular food supplies. After an outline on national food policies in Ethiopia and agricultural background, in particular details of food for work programmes, the approach taken by the assessment team is detailed. Annex 2 covers the use of RRA in Rapid Food Security Assessment; objectives, key issues, checklists (detailed in Annex 3), methods, toolbox and procedures. Annex 4 gives examples of situations where RFSA has been used, with the feeling that as much as possible was discovered

This paper argues in favour of moving beyond simple preference ranking in P/RRA as conventional methods produce limited data which is often misinterpreted. While ranking enables participants to define their own criteria for discriminating between items, it does not give an overall preference order because different items may have different weightings, so simple adding up would give misleading results. Asking participants to list items subjectively from best to worst overcomes this but still leaves the difficulty of interpreting the gap between ranks.