Access to special COVID-19 relief from distress grant and livelihood outcome of livestock farming households in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Unexpected events and shocks constitute greater threats to the attainment of zero hunger targets in Africa and the world over, and in the extreme case, lead to total collapse of the global food system and food supply chain. Consequently, this causes significant loss of critical income sources, renders individuals vulnerable, and further deteriorates households' livelihood outcome and welfare state. Therefore, the need for social protection programs to mitigate the impact of distress and unexpected events, as well as extreme occurrences cannot be over emphasized. This research used dataset from the 1499 households captured in the 2021 South African General Household Survey to investigate whether access to a special relief from distress grant has effect on the livestock farming households' food security status in Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation, a two-sample t-test, a food insecurity experience-based scale technique, and a fractional outcome model were used to analyze the datasets. Based on access to the grant, households in the non-beneficiary group are significantly distinguishable from the beneficiary counterparts, such that the beneficiary households out-performed the non-beneficiary households in the food break-even and food surplus categories. The findings further indicated the possibility of transition of the beneficiary households' population under the transitory food insecurity category to either the chronic food insecurity status or food break-even status, subject to the effectiveness of the food security policy to which they are exposed. The fractional outcome model also indicated that non-metropolitan resident households (p < 0.05), access to the special grant (p < 0.01), access to health facilities (p < 0.01), age of households' heads (p < 0.01), colored, indian and white population groups (both at p < 0.01), as well as access to remittance (p < 0.01) made significant contributions to the households' food security status. The Wald test indicated that access to the special relief grant had a significant effect on the households' food security status in the study area. The study therefore recommends accelerated investments in various social investment programs as sustained responses to expected and unexpected shocks and occurrences to be able to induce progress and realize more resilient food systems.