groups of people that are highly susceptible to food insecurity are (i) the rural poor comprising of subsistence farmers, pastoralists and landless farm laborers, and (ii) the urban poor<sup>14</sup> who spend a large share of their livelihood income in purchasing food (WFP 2009). The rural poor engage in growing crops for subsistence and/or raising livestock and/or on‐farm labor in parallel and how much of each activity they partake in is determined by the size of the household and other factors such as household land size, microclimate and the suitability of the land for agricultural activities. In good years, subsistence farmers might sell the surplus harvest in the local market; however, in years with disasters, such farmers are not producing enough for their own consumption and are not able to supply staple foods in the local market, which could result in local price hikes of these food items. The impacts of drought on the rural and urban poor and the main vulnerability characteristics of these groups are shown in Table 1.

Food security<sup>15</sup> of people can be impacted in other ways besides production and market shocks, for instance as a result of political turmoil, conflict, government’s inability to procure staple foods at high global commodity prices, government policy changes that directly affects consumer price indices, wages, remittance incomes, cost of inputs, and market factors that may or may not be affected by domestic production but impact prices of agricultural inputs and market prices of food at the retail and wholesale levels. Modeling the simultaneous impact of agriculture production shortfalls, market and economic policy on food security is an ongoing research effort and is referred to later in this paper when discussing the integration of production shortfall estimates from catastrophe crop modeling and food security vulnerability modeling.

|**Group**|**Impact**|**Vulnerability characteristic**|
|---|---|---|
|1. Rural Poor|||
|a. Subsistence|Income affected byloss of foodproduction|Low assets and little to no savings; Ability to cope|
|farmer|Expenditure on food purchase affected by resulting price<br>hike because of reduced supply in local market|with production losses or increases in food<br>expenditure verylow.|
|b. Landless<br>labourers|Income affected by reduced demand for on‐farm labour<br>Expenditure on food purchase affected by resulting price<br>hike because of reduced supply in local market|Low assets and little to no savings; Ability to cope<br>with loss in on‐farm labour income and/or increases<br>in food expenditure very low|
|c. Pastoralists|Income affected by reduced production and/or mortality of<br>livestock<br>Expenditure on food purchase affected by resulting price<br>hike because of reduced supply in local market|Ability to cope with income losses from livestock<br>losses, mortality and/or reduced yield, and/or<br>increases in food expenditure very low|
|2. Urban poor|Expenditure on food purchase affected by resulting price<br>hike because of reduced supply in local market|High susceptibility to food price hikes as a large share<br>of their household income is spent on food purchase|

Table 1. Impact of Drought on Different Groups of People

> 14 This is not to say that other groups of people couldn’t be affected. For example the global food crisis of 2007‐2008 and 2010‐2011 showed that households spending a large portion of their income on foods living in food‐deficit countries were among the more vulnerable groups though results vary from country to country. For instance Kiratu et al. 2011, show that in Tanzania the 2007‐2008 global food price hike caused an estimated 0.5‐1.0% increase in the poverty rate driven mostly by changes in urban poverty and rural poverty was largely insulated from the effects of the global price hikes.

15 Here the emphasis is on large scale food insecurity and not isolated cases such as food insecurity arising from reduced capacity or death of the breadwinner in the household.

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