Household Seasonal Food Insecurity in Oromiya Zone, Ethiopia: Causes
Degefa
Tolossa
Abstract:
The main objective of the study is to identify the environmental and
socio-economic causes of transitory food insecurity among farm households in
Oromiya Zone. The necessary data were generated from both primary and
secondary sources. Household survey, key informant interview, focus group
discussion and interpretations of topographic and thematic maps were the
principal means of generating data from primary sources. The data
analysis techniques involved household food balance model, descriptive
statistics, multivariate regression, point score analysis, and GIS for
mapping.
The
results of the measurement of per capita food availability indicate that over
eighth-tenth of the households were facing seasonal food shortage in 1999. The
variation across the study weredas has shown that households in Batti had
faced greater food deficiency. The findings reveal that households headed by
women, the young and the illiterate and those with large family size were
found to be more vulnerable to seasonal food shortage. In contrast,
farmers with fertile farmlands, those who owned a relatively large number of
livestock, those who harvested a large amount of grain, those who obtained
farm credit and those who utilized irrigation for crop cultivation were found
to have better food availability and hence were less affected by food
insecurity.
The
farmers studied perceived a multitude of environmental, demographic, economic,
infrastructural and social factors causing seasonal food insecurity. They
identified drought, erratic rainfall patterns, livestock and crop diseases,
dependency on a single meher harvest per year and pests as the major
environmental problems hindering them from being self-sufficient in food
production. Among the demographic factors, rapid population growth and
the resultant diminishing land holdings were felt to be the most important
causes of food insecurity. The farmers also perceived poverty factors
specifically, lack of investable surplus cash and shortage of draft power as
the main bottlenecks against the expansion of agricultural production.
The zone under consideration is one of the poorest with respect to the
development of rural infrastructure. The absence of irrigation and the
resultant dependency on rain for crop cultivation, and the lack of sufficient
veterinary services are among the infrastructural obstacles about which the
majority of the farmers complained. Health problems and poor savings were
perceived to be the most important social factors adversely affecting
household food security.
The
major recommendations of the study include: the degraded environment of
the zone should be rehabilitated and protected from further degradation;
population policy should be implemented effectively; the problem of land
scarcity should be solved; provision of rural credit and off-farm employment
should be enhanced; promotion of livestock and crop sub-sectors should take
the potential of the zone into consideration; and the development of
small-scale irrigation should be given a priority.