BHUBANESWAR: A Study has found that vulnerable sections including migrant workers, small and marginal farmers and daily wage labourers in the State faced food insufficiency as lockdown enforced to prevent the coronavirus spread severely impacted life and livelihood.

The study by World Food Programme (WFP) and Inter Agency Group (IAG) found that food insufficiency was more felt in northern and southern districts as compared to those in central zone.

Conducted in June across 14 districts, the study included aspirational districts too. It found that 54 pe rcent households in Aspirational Districts as well as femaleheaded households (about 56 percent) were slightly more vulnerable as compared to nonaspirational districts (47 percent) and male-headed households (48 percent).

Households with recent shortage of food attributed the condition to having no money or inaccessibility to market caused by the lockdown.

A higher proportion of households from the Aspirational Districts (46 percent) as well as female headed households (44 percent) said lack of money to purchase food was the main reason.

Asked whether there was a time when they could not access the market or grocery store in past 7 days, half the respondents replied affirmatively with a much higher proportion from the Southern zone (60 percent) compared to the Central (43 percent) and Northern (39 percent) zones.

Here too, the main reasons were travel restrictions (43 percent), followed by lack of money (27 percent).

There were, however, no reports of illness or quarantine as a reason for not accessing the market. For female-headed households lack of money (42 percent) emerged as the main reason for their inability to access the market, whereas for male-headed households it was travel restrictions.

Similarly, two out of every five households felt there was an increase in price of essential commodities in the last one month preceding the survey.

For Southern zone, it was 54 percent followed by Central (40 percent) and Northern (31 percent) zones.

Except for oil/fat/ butter, respondents of Aspirational Districts consumed less food compared to people from non-aspirational districts.

The study was conducted in Angul, Balangir, Bhadrak, Cuttack, Gajapati, Ganjam, Jajpur, Kalahandi, Keonjhar, Nuapada, Puri, Rayagada, Sambalpur and Subarnapur districts. Out of these, Balangir, Kalahandi, Nuapada and Rayagada are aspirational districts.

A total of 473 respondents were covered.

WHAT THEY ATE

• Majority of households had consumed vegetables/leaves (89 %), pulses or nuts (78%), oil/fat/butter (72%) in last 24 hours

• More than half (55%) had sugar or sweets

• Almost all households had consumed starches, roots and tubers

• Only 20 % of the households had consumed fruits

• Only 32 % consumed meat while dairy products consumption was low at 25 %

• Households from the Southern zone had a lower consumption of meat