Rural families have a range of strategies with which to cope with seasonal and inter‐seasonal fluctuations in food supply. For landed households the most important seasonal strategies include choice of cropping patterns to spread risks involving mixed cropping, cultivation of secondary crops, particularly root crops. Other seasonal coping mechanisms include sale of small assets and livestock, drawing down of stored product and cultivation of supportive social relationships. Off‐farm income earning work provides one of the best buffers against seasonal stress. If a bad season stretches into a prolonged drought, or if there is a sudden drop in purchasing power, then these activities are further intensified, but families are forced into divesting resources: selling productive assets, constricting food intake, and migration. If investment in rural areas and food production recognised these strategies the severe impact of famine could be avoided.