MAPPING FOOD DESERTS IN THARAKA CONSTITUENCY USING COMPOSED INDEX OF CRITICAL ACCESSIBILITY TO FOOD AND LIVESTOCK MARKETS

Abstract

In agropastoral regions of Kenya, households often trek long distances to access food markets and sell livestock. Distance defines physical accessibility and even utilisation of market facilities especially in semi-arid areas where food insecurity and malnutrition are rampant. This phenomenon affects intra-regional food exchange and consumption patterns. Close to 70 % of agropastoral farmers within Tharaka Constituency lack access to formal markets for their produce. Studies on intra-variations in access to market services remains scanty, yet market purchase account for most food consumed across urban and rural areas. Tharaka constituency lies in semi-arid area characterised by erratic mild-to-acute food shortage seasons. This exploratory study utilised Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to measure physical accessibility to open air food and livestock markets in Tharaka. Normative, administrative and geospatial datasets were used in the geospatial analysis. Results showed that geographic accessibility to market centers across the 883 villages in the constituency varied spatially. In terms of physical accessibility to markets, 40.4% of the total population live in regions with very high-to-high inaccessibility risks while 36.1% are found in areas with very low-to-low inaccessibility risks while 23.5% of the entire population exists in places having moderate inaccessibility risks. From this, a large portion of population live in food deserts villages. This spatial inequity negatively affects household food security and can explain the chronic hunger and malnutrition problem experienced in the area. There is need for markets within high inaccessibility risk areas hereby referred as food deserts to be upgraded and infrastructure thereof improved to enable intra-regional food mobility.