DETERMINANTS OF HOUSEHOLD’S RESILIENCE TO FOOD INSECURITY IN THE CASE OF ZALA WOREDA, GOFA ZONE SOUTHREN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The major objective of this study was to measure the determinants of rural households’ resilience to food insecurity with three stage random samples of 384 households in Zala Woreda, Gofa Zone Southern Ethiopia. Zala Woreda agricultural system is rain-dependent and highly susceptible to climatic shocks, particularly in the lowland areas. Despite the government’s efforts to improve agricultural production, food insecurity has persisted. To model food insecurity logistic regression was used whereas principal component analysis and structural equation model were used to model resilience to food insecurity. The study revealed that 40.88 percent of the households were not able to meet the daily recommended minimum calorie requirement and 30.31 percent of the households were far below food insecurity line and while 11.41 percent of the households were found the most food insecure groups in the study area. Accordingly, survey result shows that the average mean farm land size is 0.77 and 2 hectare for food insecure and food secure households respectively. With regard to tropical livestock units 2.34 for food insecure and 5 food secure households. Whereas average mean household size is 6 for food insecure and 5 for food secure households. The study found that the major coping strategy used by households in the study area were reducing of quantity of meal per day and changing the dietary pattern. The logistic regression result revealed that, household size have a significant and positive influence on the state of household food insecurity while age of households head, education of household head, farm land size, tropical livestock units, access to credit, engagementoff-farm activities and productive safety net program were negatively and significantly affects food insecurity. Regarding resilience to food insecurity, the study found that Mid-highlands is relatively more resilient to food insecurity and its resilience depends highly on access to asset, but the ability to build household’s resilience is weak. The result form structural equation modeling revealed that latent variables except public service and stability, other variables are positively and statistically significantly affect household’s resilience to food insecurity in the study areas. Thus, government may help rural households gather more resources in order to acquire more assets. In addition to this, increasing access of rural households to public services such as access to market, health services, schools and the like has a paramount importance to build households resilience to food insecurity