MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE Directorate of Economics

The Directorate of Economics of the Ministry of Agriculture maintains two publication series for research on food security issues. Publications under the Flash series are short (3-4 pages), carefully focused reports designated to provide timely research results on issues of great interest. Publications under the Research Paper series are designed to provide longer, more in-depth treatment of food security issues. The preparation of Flash reports and Research Reports, and their discussion with those who design and influence programs and policies in Mozambique, is an important step in the Directorate's overall analyses and planning mission. Comments and suggestion from interested users on reports under each of these series help identify additional questions for consideration in later data analyses and report writing, and in the design of further research activities. Users of these reports are encouraged to submit comments and inform us of ongoing information and analysis needs. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Directorate of Economics is undertaking collaborative research on food security with Michigan State University's Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. We wish to acknowledge the financial and substantive support of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG) of Mozambique and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Maputo to complete food security research in Mozambique. Research support from the Bureau of Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade of USAID/Washington also made it possible for Michigan State University researchers to contribute to this research. This report does not reflect the official views or policy positions of the Government of the Republic of Mozambique nor of USAID. The authors also wish to acknowledge with gratitude the contributions of Ellen Payongayong and Tom Walker, who provided valuable assistance in and recommendations for the construction of the TIA 2002-2005 panel household income dataset and the water balance model, both of which are used in this paper. The authors also express their gratitude to the staff of the Department of Statistics in the Directorate of Economics (MINAG) and to the TIA survey respondents who made this analysis possible. Mozambique made impressive reductions in poverty from 1996 to 2002. The national poverty rate, as documented by the National Household Consumption Survey – Inquérito aos Agregados Familiares (IAF) expenditure surveys in those years, fell from 69.4% in 1996/97 to 54.1% in 2002/03. Consistent with the IAF expenditure survey results, Trabalho de Inquerito Agricola (TIA) rural household income surveys showed that mean and median rural household income per adult …