Abstract

CERDAS-RAMIREZ, Roberto  and  ESPINOZA-SANCHEZ, Albert. Status of food and nutritional security in Guanacaste: Santa Cruz county. InterSedes [online]. 2018, vol.19, n.40, pp.188-217. ISSN 2215-2458.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/isucr.v20i40.35662.

An interview was applied to a sample of 704 households (364 in the district of Santa Cruz and 340 in the district of 27 De Abril) in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, with an error of 5% (per district) and a 95% level of confidence. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: the first one was designed to measure the inhabitants’ perception in these regions on the availability and quality of the water they drink, the second one consists in the implementation of the Latin American and Caribbean Scale of Food and Nutritional Security (ELCSA), standardized by FAO for Central American countries. Of the households surveyed in the county of Santa Cruz, 53.8% are safe in the food aspect, 36.1% rank as "slight unsafe food", but about 10.1% of households show worrying "moderate to severe unsafe food", the latter percentage equals to 1681 households in crisis approximately throughout the county of Santa Cruz for 2014. A logistic regression analysis demonstrated that living in rural areas (27 De Abril) increased the risk of food insecurity by four times compared to living in urban areas of Santa Cruz (downtown). Water shortages increased the risk of being food unsafe by 100% compared to those households where such water shortages did not occur. Having a monthly income lower than 100 thousand colones (USD $184) was associated with an increasing unsafe food risk of 11 times compared to a greater monthly income of 600 thousand colones (USD $1,109).

Keywords : Food security; Santa Cruz; Guanacaste; Costa Rica; quality and water availability.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )