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Mental models of food security in rural Mali

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 28 March 2018

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Abstract

Recent estimates indicate that 12% of the global population is likely to have suffered from chronic hunger, due to lack of enough food for an active and healthy life. West Africa, specifically across the Sahel countries, is acutely vulnerable to food insecurity concerns. Mail is emblematic of this problem with approximately 4.6 million citizens considered food insecure. Food security poses formidable challenges. Studies have shown that in order to understand food insecurity and identify steps for effective intervention, there is a need to apprehend the food systems and food in/security in a holistic way beyond production alone. Understanding the behavioral aspects of food security is critical in the African context where agriculture, while oriented toward basic subsistence, remains embedded in social system including the social dynamics of households, extended families, and communities. This exploratory work focuses on developing a nuanced understanding of food security and adaptive behaviors to current challenges to food security at the household level with a distinct focus on inter- and intra-family behavioral dynamics in rural, southern Mali. Using mental models methodology, we developed two influence diagrams and a set of sub-models that represent rural households’ mental models of food security under traditional conditions and under conditions of external pressures. These models suggest that food security in rural Mali is at considerable risk due to the influence of external challenges, such as climate change, on traditional behaviors and a lack of easily accessible corresponding behavioral adaptations.

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Change history

  • 28 March 2018

    The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error. The acknowledgement section is inadvertently omitted. The missing acknowledgement is given below.

Notes

  1. Lucidchart is an online model creation software package that allows multiple individuals to work on the same model collectively or individually.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, 22219 Jordan Hall Addition, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    Louie Rivers III & Alexa Wood

  2. Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, 480 Wilson Road, 151 Natural Resources Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Udita Sanga & Saweda Liverpool-Tasie

  3. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, BP 320, Bamako, Mali

    Amadou Sidibe

  4. Department of Geography, Michigan State University, 673 Auditorium Rd., 121 Geography Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1117, USA

    Rajiv Paudel

  5. Department of Sociology, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, 509 E. Circle Dr., 316 Berkey Hall, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1111, USA

    Sandra T. Marquart-Pyatt

  6. Department of Geography, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, 673 Auditorium Rd., 121 Geography Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824-1117, USA

    Arika Ligmann-Zielinska

  7. Department of Community Sustainability, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, 480 Wilson Road, 151 Natural Resources Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Laura Schmitt Olabisi

  8. College of Architecture, Texas A&M University, 3137 TAMU Langford Bldg. A, Room 122, College Station, TX, 77843-3137, USA

    Eric Jing Du

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  1. Louie Rivers III
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  2. Udita Sanga
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  4. Alexa Wood
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  7. Arika Ligmann-Zielinska
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  8. Laura Schmitt Olabisi
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  9. Eric Jing Du
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  10. Saweda Liverpool-Tasie
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Correspondence to Louie Rivers III.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-018-9682-9.

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Rivers III, L., Sanga, U., Sidibe, A. et al. Mental models of food security in rural Mali. Environ Syst Decis 38, 33–51 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-017-9669-y

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