Agriculture and HIV/AIDS

Agriculture is the main source of livelihood of the majority of people affected by HIV and AIDS globally, and it is being progressively undermined by the disease. In Sub-Saharan Africa AIDS is affecting the rural landscape in ways that demand a rethinking of development policy and practice and parts of South Asia may soon face a similar situation. Not only does HIV/AIDS affect agriculture, but agriculture also affects HIV/AIDS. The dynamics of household and community interactions with HIV/AIDS is an iterative cycle, with HIV/AIDS affecting and being affected by people's livelihoods. The risks people face of contracting HIV will be governed partly by the susceptibility of the livelihood system upon which they depend. After HIV has entered a community, the type and severity of its impacts on assets and institutions is then governed by the vulnerability of the system. These impacts will in turn determine the responses that households and communities adopt to deal with this threat — responses that lead to certain outcomes (nutrition and food security being among them) that themselves condition future susceptibility and vulnerability. And so the cycle turns.