2023, Vol. 8, Special Issue 4

Around 2 billion people in the world experience moderate or severe food insecurity. The major task facing the world today is that of feeding the ever-increasing population of over 7 billion people subject to climate change and natural resource constraints. The problem of food insecurity is prevalent all over the world but it is more common in developing countries like India. As per the latest National Family Health Survey of 2015-16 (NFHS - 4), Dang, one of six backward districts in Gujarat primarily tribal district-95% belong to the scheduled tribes-48.1% of children under five years were stunted, 72.2% of women were anaemic. This study attempted to investigate the access and utilization of available coping strategies against food insecurity using World Bank guidelines for assessing the sources of risk. The study is based on primary data collected from tribal district of Gujarat. There was high existence of pest and disease before harvesting of crop in Dang district as most of farmers realised its high intensity. Major health risk found was mortality and morbidity of livestock. Landless and marginal & small farmers showed high intensity of lack of financing/capital. household used crop diversification or production of less risky crops as coping mechanism for rainfall untimeliness at harvesting. It is suggested that the government should exhaustively work on facilitating credit availability and subsidize the farmers to reverse the problem of food insecurity and to enhance households coping capacity to food shortage and/or insecurity.