Resource Economics for Food Security Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Food Security Programme Managers, Agricultural Economists and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-FS-036

Before you join: Participants should have practical exposure to food security, agriculture, nutrition, humanitarian response, social protection, environmental management or development programmes.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Food-security decisions are often made under land, water, fiscal and market constraints. Governments, donors, humanitarian agencies and agribusinesses must decide whether scarce resources should support irrigation, input subsidies, cash transfers, storage, school feeding, social protection or market reform. Sound choices require more than production figures: they require analysis of household purchasing power, market incentives, environmental costs, seasonal risks and distributional effects.

This course develops the economic tools used to assess food-security problems and select interventions. Participants examine scarcity, opportunity cost, production functions, demand elasticities, market failures and property rights. They apply household food-security measures, price analysis, water accounting, cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis and policy incidence analysis. The course also addresses shock analysis, early warning, cash and voucher design, adaptive social protection, natural capital accounting and results measurement.

Teaching combines focused instructor briefings with worked cases from drought-prone agricultural areas, urban food-price shocks, irrigation investments, staple-market interventions and humanitarian response programmes. Participants work with realistic datasets, intervention options and policy trade-offs, using structured group analysis and facilitated decision discussions. Each participant leaves with a food-security resource allocation analysis pack containing diagnostic templates, appraisal models, indicator sheets and an action plan for applying the methods to a current programme or policy decision.

The course suits professionals who already work with food systems, agriculture, nutrition, humanitarian assistance, climate adaptation or public investment and need stronger economic reasoning for programme design, budgeting and policy advice.

What you will be able to do

  • Analyse food-security constraints using scarcity, opportunity cost and market-failure concepts
  • Assess land, water and natural-resource allocation using production and valuation methods
  • Interpret staple-market prices, marketing margins and seasonal price movements
  • Measure household food access using HEA, dietary diversity and affordability indicators
  • Classify food-security severity using IPC evidence and early-warning indicators
  • Design cash, voucher, subsidy and social-protection interventions using economic criteria
  • Appraise food-security investments using cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and sensitivity analysis
  • Produce a resource allocation action plan with indicators, assumptions and decision rules

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Make defensible recommendations on food-security resource allocation
  • Assess cash, voucher and in-kind assistance choices with economic evidence
  • Interpret price, household and early-warning data for programme decisions
  • Build credible investment cases for irrigation, storage and social-protection proposals
  • Communicate policy trade-offs clearly to technical and senior stakeholders

For your organisation

  • Improved selection of food-security interventions under constrained budgets
  • Stronger appraisal of agriculture, water and market-system investments
  • Better alignment between assistance modalities and local market conditions
  • More transparent targeting, transfer-value and subsidy decisions
  • Clearer evidence trails for donor, government and board-level decisions

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can frame food-security problems as economic resource allocation decisions.

  • Food security pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability
  • Distinguishing chronic food insecurity from seasonal and transitory shocks
  • Household production theory and constrained consumption choices under scarcity
  • Entitlement theory applied to market, own-production and transfer failures
  • Mapping food-system actors, flows, incentives and market power
  • Classifying public, private and common-pool food resources by tenure
  • SDG 2 indicators and national food-security policy targets

Participants can apply core microeconomic concepts to food and resource policy choices.

  • Scarcity, opportunity cost and marginal analysis in food-resource allocation
  • Production possibility frontiers for land, water and labour trade-offs
  • Estimating demand elasticities for staple foods and nutrient-rich foods
  • Market failure diagnosis: externalities, public goods, information asymmetry and market power
  • Property-rights regimes governing land, fisheries, forests and irrigation systems
  • Choosing policy instruments: taxes, subsidies, quotas, standards and transfers
  • Equity-efficiency trade-offs in targeted food and resource interventions

Participants can assess land and water choices using production, tenure and risk analysis.

  • Land suitability analysis using soil, climate, slope and water criteria
  • Water accounting distinguishes withdrawals, consumption, return flows and depletion
  • Shadow pricing irrigation water under allocation constraints for competing users
  • Comparing rainfed, irrigated and conservation agriculture production functions
  • Common-pool resource dilemmas and Ostrom design principles
  • Assessing land tenure security, gendered rights and investment incentives
  • Climate risk scenarios for drought, flood and yield variability

Participants can interpret market signals and assess their implications for food access.

  • Spatial equilibrium analysis links surplus zones, deficit zones and transport costs
  • Marketing margins separate farmgate prices, wholesale costs and retail spreads
  • Price transmission analysis identifies asymmetric responses along staple value chains
  • Seasonal price indices inform storage, procurement and household purchase timing
  • Parastatal procurement effects on private trade and producer incentives
  • Import parity and export parity pricing for tradable staples
  • Market information systems assessed for coverage, frequency and data quality

Participants can assess household food access, affordability and livelihood vulnerability.

  • Household Economy Analysis identifies food, income and expenditure sources
  • Engel curves and expenditure shares reveal consumption constraints
  • Cost of the Diet estimates minimum nutritious-diet affordability
  • Food Consumption Score and Household Dietary Diversity Score interpreted correctly
  • Livelihood zoning distinguishes wealth groups, hazards and market dependence
  • Gendered control of assets shapes intrahousehold allocation and nutrition
  • Targeting errors compared through inclusion, exclusion and administrative costs

Participants can assess food-security risks and interpret evidence for anticipatory action.

  • IPC Acute Food Insecurity phases connect evidence to severity classification
  • Integrated Food Security Phase Classification evidence protocols and convergence
  • Scenario analysis combines hazard, exposure, vulnerability and coping capacity
  • Early-warning indicators: rainfall anomalies, terms of trade, displacement and prices
  • Livelihood protection thresholds distinguish stress from crisis responses
  • Contingency financing triggers linked to pre-agreed forecast thresholds
  • Assessing coping strategies with reduced Coping Strategies Index

Participants can compare intervention modalities and specify economically sound programme parameters.

  • Theory of change links transfers, markets, diets and resilience outcomes
  • Comparing cash, vouchers and in-kind aid under market functionality conditions
  • Transfer-value calculation uses expenditure gaps, price data and household size
  • Public works wage rates assessed against labour-market distortion risks
  • School feeding design addresses procurement, nutrition standards and attendance incentives
  • Input subsidy incidence across farm sizes, genders and agroecological zones
  • Adaptive social protection integrates registries, payments and shock triggers

Participants can appraise food-security investments using economic evaluation methods.

  • Cost-benefit analysis discounts resource investments using social discount rates
  • Net present value and internal rate of return compared
  • Cost-effectiveness analysis compares nutrition outcomes where monetisation is unsuitable
  • Distributional weights expose welfare effects across income groups
  • Partial budget analysis tests farm-level adoption economics
  • Sensitivity analysis varies yields, prices, discount rates and implementation costs
  • Monte Carlo simulation represents uncertainty in investment appraisal

Participants can incorporate environmental costs and climate risks into food-security decisions.

  • Externality valuation captures soil erosion, groundwater depletion and pollution damages
  • Natural capital accounting follows the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting framework
  • Life-cycle assessment compares emissions, water use and land footprints
  • Climate-smart agriculture appraised for productivity, adaptation and mitigation trade-offs
  • Payments for ecosystem services evaluated for additionality and permanence
  • Agroecological intensification assessed against biodiversity, yields and labour requirements
  • Safeguards screening identifies environmental and social risks before investment

Participants can build an evidence-based resource allocation plan for a food-security decision.

  • Food-system policy coherence maps agriculture, trade, health and social protection
  • Policy incidence analysis identifies winners, losers and fiscal burdens
  • Results frameworks connect inputs, outputs, outcomes and food-security impacts
  • Indicator reference sheets specify definitions, sources, frequency and disaggregation
  • Quasi-experimental designs distinguish attribution from plausible contribution
  • Difference-in-differences estimates programme effects using comparison groups
  • Action plans assign decisions, evidence needs, owners and review dates

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Food-security resource allocation diagnostic template
  2. Household food-access and diet-affordability indicator sheet
  3. Staple-market and seasonal price analysis model
  4. Cash, voucher and in-kind modality comparison matrix
  5. Food-security investment appraisal worksheet
  6. Resource allocation action plan

Who should attend

  • Food Security Programme Managers — assess intervention choices, targeting and resource trade-offs
  • Agricultural Economists — analyse production, markets, natural resources and policy incentives
  • Humanitarian Response Managers — select assistance modalities using market and household evidence
  • Government Policy Advisers — evaluate food, agriculture, trade and social-protection policies
  • Nutrition Programme Specialists — connect diet affordability, food access and nutrition outcomes
  • Donor and Investment Officers — appraise food-security proposals, assumptions and expected returns

Skills and tools covered

Resource allocation analysisFood-market economicsHousehold food-security measurementInvestment appraisalShock-response designPolicy incidence analysis

Tools and standards

Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), Household Economy Analysis (HEA), Cost of the Diet, SEEA Ecosystem Accounting

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short technical briefings followed by guided case work, group exercises, quantitative interpretation and decision simulations. Participants assess household and market data, compare intervention options, calculate appraisal measures and discuss trade-offs between efficiency, equity, nutrition and environmental effects. Cases draw on staple-market shocks, drought response, irrigation investment, input subsidies and adaptive social protection. Facilitated application planning helps participants translate methods into decisions, analysis requests and monitoring arrangements for their own work.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical exposure to food security, agriculture, nutrition, humanitarian response, social protection, environmental management or development programmes. They should be comfortable reading tables, percentages, charts and basic budget figures. Familiarity with programme design, market assessments or policy analysis is useful. The course uses applied economic concepts and simple spreadsheet-style calculations, but does not require an economics degree, advanced mathematics, econometrics, coding skills or prior use of specialised statistical software.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should have experience or working familiarity with food security, agriculture, nutrition, humanitarian assistance, social protection or development programmes. An economics degree is not required, but participants should be comfortable interpreting basic tables, percentages and charts.

Participants should bring a laptop for reviewing templates and working with course datasets where classroom arrangements permit. Bringing a current programme concept note, assessment report or policy question will help make the application plan directly relevant.

The course is designed for programme managers, economists, policy advisers, humanitarian staff, nutrition specialists and donor or investment officers. It is particularly relevant to people making decisions about food assistance, agricultural investment, market support or social protection.

This course concentrates on the economic reasoning behind food-security decisions, including resource allocation, pricing, household affordability and investment appraisal. It does not focus primarily on operational logistics, clinical nutrition, emergency coordination or agricultural production techniques alone.

Participants can use the diagnostic templates to assess a proposed intervention, compare assistance modalities, review transfer values or test an investment case. The final action plan identifies a live decision, required evidence, responsible colleagues and review dates.

The course runs for five training days from 08:30 to 16:30, providing approximately 32.5 contact hours. Time is divided between instructor briefings, case analysis, group exercises, simulations, quantitative interpretation and application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

More courses in Food Security

Food Security Advanced Food Security Analysis Training Course 10 days · from USD 2,200 · next 16 Nov Food Security Agricultural Investment and Food Security Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov Food Security Food Security Resilience Planning Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov Food Security Food Security Survey Analysis Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov Food Security Food Security and Nutrition Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov Food Security National Food Security Strategy Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov Food Security Nutrition in Emergencies Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov Food Security Rights-Based Food and Nutrition Security Training Course 5 days · from USD 1,100 · next 16 Nov