Analysis of food insecurity and coping strategies among rural households: evidence from western ethiopia

The continuing evolution of food security as an operational concept in the public policy has reflected the wider recognition of the complexities of the technical and policy issues involved. An understanding of its major causes is important for interventions aiming to reduce food crisis. The current study was designed to analyze food insecurity status of rural households, to identify determinants of food insecurity status among rural households, and to identify rural households’ coping strategies against food insecurity. The analysis was based on cross sectional data gathered from randomly selected households while both descriptive statistics and econometric analysis were used for the analysis of data. The results from descriptive statistics show that the majority (57.3%) of total surveyed households were food insecure. The binary log it model outputs show that six variables were significant determinants of household food insecurity status. Accordingly, age of household head, family size and dependency ratio were positive and significant determinant while education level of household head, seed type used for production and size of cultivated land were found to be negative and significant determinant of food insecurity status. Furthermore, results show that households use different coping strategies such as borrowing food or cash from relatives or neighbors, reduce number of meals, reduce meal size, sale of livestock than usual and sale of fire wood and charcoal against food insecurity. The results generally suggest the need to improve agricultural technologies enhancing land productivity. Finally, limiting population size through integrated health and education services and giving priority to old aged headed households in interventions, introduction of water harvesting technologies to practice intensified agriculture are also suggested to improve food insecurity status of households.