A Case study of Sidama, Wolaita and Guraghe Zones
DCG Report 55
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Household food security issues have become the concern of national governments as well as the international communities during the last few decades. Household level food shortage is one of the most important effects of population growth and population dynamics affecting multidimensional social and economic life of household members.
The objective of this paper is therefore to investigate household food security status, determinants and coping strategies of food insecure households in three selected areas of SNNPR: namely, Sidama, Wolaita and Guraghe.
The study has identified that households in the study areas are in precarious situation where more than half of the small rural householders face both seasonal and continual food shortage.
The study has also revealed that there seems to exist intra-household food distribution and consumption, wherein 95.8 percent of the female respondents reported that their husbands get prior access to food during times of food scarcity in the household.
Most of the respondents did not have livestock; this implies that the household misses the opportunity either to sell out these resources during food crisis or consume them directly or their by-products. Also, it becomes difficult, almost impossible to borrow money from local moneylenders without livestock as collateral.
It appeared that households in the study areas employ a range of coping strategies during serious food shortage. Some of the commonly mentioned strategies in place are: minimizing the number of meals and amount of food consumption, using buffer stock, diversifying livelihood seasonal migration to neighboring community during peak season, inter cropping, wage labor, food aid, local saving mechanism, petty trading, migration of household members, cultivating more crops and others.
Finally, on the basis of the findings, few policy recommendations are given. The recommendations are addressed at five levels: at household level, community level, government level, non-government and researchers level.
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