Theorizing food insecurity: building a livelihood vulnerability framework for researching food insecurity

Food insecurity and increasing impoverishment of the masses in developing countries constitute a challenge for social scientists, whose theories have tried to catch up with the enormous challenges of diversity, dynamism and the impacts of the forces of­‘glocalisation’. This article reviews the efforts in the social sciences towards understanding food insecurity and suggests a framework incorporating dynamism and diversity in rural communities in the research process. Structural changes affecting peasant economies and peasant responses make existing general theories inappropriate without a contextual treatment. Insights from existing theories are used to construct a livelihood vulnerability framework for researching and understanding food insecurity in rural areas.     

Quota concentration in the New Zealand fishery: Annual catch entitlement and the small fisher

New Zealand's quota management system (QMS) was introduced in 1986 to enhance the sustainability of New Zealand's fishery. This paper examines trends in quota and catch share concentration across a range of important fish stocks. It demonstrates that continuing concentration is occurring in the ownership of quota for deepwater species. At the same time there has been an increase in participation by small scale fishers in the inshore fishery. This appears to be driven by the introduction of the Annual Catch Entitlement (ACE) regime, allowing annual catch shares to be accessed at reduced transaction cost.