The impacts of climatic and non-climatic factors on household food security: a study on the poor living in the Malaysian East Coast Economic Region

Sustainable food security at the household level is a national concern in many countries. The reasons for household food insecurity include, among others, social, economic, political, and personal factors, as well as climatic changes and its outcomes. This research aims to determine the linkage of the factors of climatic changes, non-climatic factors and household resiliencies with the level of household food security among the poor and low income households in Malaysia. The present study is based on primary data that were collected in July and October 2012 through a questionnaire survey of 460 poor and low-income households from the Pahang, Kelantan, and Terengganu States of Malaysia. The sample was selected from E-Kasih poor household database based on a cluster random sampling technique. Initially the study measures household food security according to the United States Agency for International Development – Household Food Insecurity Access (USAIDHFIA) model, and has run ordinal regressions under the logit and probit models. This study finds that household food insecurity is not only linked with social and economic factors, but also significantly linked with the climatic factors. Therefore, food security programmes must be integrated with the programmes for climatic change adaptation.