SOCIO-ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF FOOD INSECURITY AMONG RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN DEMBA GOFA WOREDA. GAMO GOFA ZONE, SNNPR.

Abstract

The struggle to achieve food security at the household level in the rural areas of Ethiopia dated back a long period. Yet remained as a challenging goal. To intervene the problem, the need disentangle the interwoven factors which influence food insecurity, and to understand the livelihood strategies of the rural households have got paramount importance to development practitioners and policy makers to find the way out. In light of this, examination of the socio economic characteristics of the food insecure; identification of factors influencing food insecurity; and assessment of livelihood strategies of the rural households were undertaken in the study. In this study sampling procedure was employed to selectd 5 Kebeles out of 35 kebles and 200 sample households was drown out 5 kebeles in the study area. For the purpose, survey questionnaire was prepared to collect the primary data from the sample households. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics like mean, percentage, and frequency distribution were used to describe the socio economic characteristics of the sample households and used to identify the determinants of food insecurity. Those variables are include family size, annual income, amount of credit received, irrigation use, age of household head, status of education, cultivated land size, livestock ownership and number of ox owned. The livelihood strategies of the rural households were also found to be diversification and integration of activities, and migration is also adopted when the shock to their livelihood becomes very serious. Therefore, consideration of socio economical determinants of food insecurity; and the livelihood of the rural households are important because it provides information that would enable to undertake effective measures with the aim of improving rural livelihoods in general and foodsecurity in particular.