HOUSEHOLD FOOD INSECURITY STATUS AND COPING STRATEGIES IN ANALEMMO WOREDA, HADIYA ZONE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hunger and undernourishment are the main challenges of today‟s world. In order to combat threats of land degradation combined with erratic rainfall, drought, El Niño, weak infrastructural and poverty problems carriage a serious threat to households‟ food security in Ethiopia. The objective of study is to analyze household food insecurity status and coping strategies in Analemmo woreda. Three-stage sampling technique was used to select sampled household in Analemmo woreda Hadiya Zone. In this study, a total of 200 households were selected by using systematic random sampling with proportional to population size from six sample kebeles. Both primary and secondary data were collected for this study. Both descriptive and econometric models were used to analyze the collected data. Household calorie acquisition was employed to categorize households into food secure and food insecurely status. For the econometric analysis binary logit model and ordered probit model were used to identify determinates of household food insecurity status and severity in the study area. The survey results show that 64% and 36% households were food insecure and food secure and severity food insecurity 36%, 18%, 13% and 33% food secure, mild, moderately and severely food insecure respectively. Thus, based on the results of logit model, agro-ecology, age and education level of households, a number of oxen, soil and water conservation, credit amount, size of cultivated land and receiving remittance negatively and significantly affect households‟ food insecurity.Sex of households‟ positive effect and significant relationship with households‟ food insecurity. Variable significant in logit model are also significant in ordered with the exception that there is magnitude and significance level difference. Additionally, drought-tolerant seed, productive saftent program participation, access to climatic information and off and non - farm income of households were significant and negatively determine household severity of food insecurity and access to extension agent determine positively. The common coping strategies choosing on less preferred food, engaging in off-farm, borrow food, restrict food consumption of adults, and reduce meals size, seasonal migration, sale of a household asset, receiving support from productive saftent program participation. It was recommended that the government should enhance productivity per unit from a given land by using improved agricultural technologies like drought resistance seed in low land agro-ecology, government should provide productive saftent program participation, capacity building on age, educational level and sex of household head, providing credit, providing climatic information for farmers, providing drought-tolerant seed on time and with low input cost,

xv provision of veterinary service for oxen health, enhance in off and non-farm income generating jobs, providing training on soil and water conservation