Food Security And Livelihood Strategies Of Rural Farm Households With Focus On Female-headed Households In Sasigga District East Wollega Zone Ethiopia

Ethiopia has a long history of famine. Regardless of the many attempts made to end it, the issuernof food security is still unresolved. Most of the previous inquiries on the issue have focused onrncertain parts of the country known as “famine prone” which are affected because of prolongedrncivil wars, recurrent drought, and other factors. Whatsoever the cause, food insecurity has arndisproportionate effects on different groups of people who have varying levels of access tornresources, local culture, and institutional support. Nevertheless, there was less inquiry on howrnthis affects the food security of certain disadvantaged groups of people in the regions assumed tornbe food self-sufficient. Most food security studies neglected southwestern part of the country andrnfemale-headed households (as a unit of analysis) in their approaches to deal with the issue. Withrnsuch background, this study was set to investigate the livelihood strategies and food securityrnstatus of female-headed households in Sasiga district of East Wollega zone of Oromia regionalrnstate. The principal objectives were to examine the level of access to livelihood resources neededrnto pursue different strategies and food security situation of householdsby utilizing SustainablernLivelihood Framework (SLF). To this end, a mixed research design was employed tornsystematically integrate the socio-economic data generated through survey, key informantrninterview, FGDs and observation. A cross-sectional Data were collected cross-sectionalrnhousehold survey of 390 (257 male and 133 female-headed) randomly sampled households. Thernresult shows, based on, all the different indicators used in the study, female-headed householdsrnwere more food insecure than male headed households. Such food security situation steamedrnbecause of unequal access and control on productive resources and inability to properly utilizernthe available resources which hindered female-headed households from pursuing viablernlivelihood strategies and ensure their food security. Therefore; female-headed households,rnthough in a relatively abundant productive resource and less environmentally affected region, arernin a dire food insecurity problem. The study recommends that female-headed households‟ accessrnto productive resources should be improved. The agricultural technologies and social servicesrnhave to be designed to fit to the needs of female-headed households. Sustainable awarenessrncreation works on gender equality to members of the society shall be imperative.rnKeywords; livelihood, local institutions, food security, farming households, female-headedrnhouseholds

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism