| Abstract | The plains around the shores of Nong Han, the largest freshwater lake in Northeastern Thailand, have been a site for rice farming and small-scale capture fisheries for several decades. However, for the last few decades the area has been undergoing various changes including rapid urbanization and industrialization, massive forest clearing upstream and the establishment of sluice gate downstream, transforming institutional and legal arrangements for the lake management, and increased climate variability. These changes have inevitably affected livelihoods and food security of small-scale farmers whose subsistence-based agricultural productions depend partly on the integrity of the natural environments. Meanwhile, the seasonal nature of farm production and income flow urges them to involve in nonfarm activity and thus become more integrated into markets. Such phenomena question the viability of small-scale farmers ' livelihoods in securing household consumption and income as two basic economic needs. For this reason, the study primarily aims at investigating socioeconomic profile and food security status of small farm households around the Nong Han Lake. Four villages in Lao Po Daeng subdistrict located on the southeast of the lake in Sakon Nakhon province were purposively selected based on ce1tain criteria. 20 small-scale farmers were interviewed in each village using household questionnaire survey. Hence, there are in total 80 representative farming households. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies and average were used in the first stage to assess farm household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics including age, gender, education, occupation, income, expenditure, and livelihood assets. The results show that most of the small-scale farmer respondents are literate usually having obtained primary level of education while their children typically obtained secondary education. This also leads to a common pattern of division of labor within the households, by which younger generation of family members tend to work in nonfarm sectors either locally or elsewhere, whereas the elder hold on to agricultural activities. Average annual household income of the respondent households is fairly lower than sub-district, regional and national averages of rural household income, and 32.5 percent of these households have per capita incomes below the national pove1ty line. Additionally, their average food share of household expenditure is slightly higher than the country's average. Besides, although their human, physical, social and natural assets are found to be moderate on average, their financial assets are usually very low. All these findings suggest that poverty rate in the study area cannot be negligible. Demographic and socioeconomic data were then used to compute two food security indices, namely, the household ability to afford minimum necessary food expenditure (also called minimum food income) index and the food share of household income index. The results reveal that the respondent farm households are generally food-secure, and only 17.5 percent of them fall into the food-insecure or vulnerable category. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were fmther conducted to identify determining factors of the variation in income and food security statuses of the households. Incomes from capture fishery, farm production, salaried work, nonfarm self-employment and remittances and total number of household members are the best predictor variables of household ability to afford minimum necessary food expenditure, while the same set of income variables and a number of human capital variables are found to be positively associated with household income. Further investigation of the food-insecure/vulnerable households also shows that they have low performance in many of these determinant variables. Therefore, this study proposes that future policy and development activities should attempt to enhance the key determinants of food security by encouraging a collective approach to fishery and natural resource management and integrated management of the Nong Han Lake at the river basin level, as well as improving human capitals of small farm households so that they have greater capacity to participate in more remunerative, skilled employments that will in turn benefit their income portfolio and consumption. Further research should take into account the relationship between income and nutritional outcome and the intrahousehold aspect of food-security. |