The limitations of the food supply focus came to light during the food crisis that again plagued Africa in the mid-1980s. It became clear that adequate food availability at the national level did not automatically translate into food security at the individual and household levels. Researchers and development practitioners realized that food insecurity occurred in situations where food was available but not accessible because of erosion to people's entitlement to food (Borton and Shoham, 1991). "Entitlement" refers to the set of income and resource bundles (e.g. assets, commodities) over which households can establish control and secure their livelihoods. Sen's (1981) theory on food entitlement had a considerable influence on this change in thinking, representing a paradigm shift in the way that famines were conceptualized. Households derive food entitlements from their own production, income, gathering of wild foods, community support (claims), assets, migration, etc. Thus a number of socio-economic variables have an influence on a household's access to food.
