Abstract
Food insecurity is an overriding problem of most developing countries like Ethiopia, which requires empirical evidence pertinent to food security policy formulation and implementation. This paper investigates food security situation of households by surveying 260 farm households randomly and proportionately sampled from the major farming systems in Ethiopia. Households’ daily calorie availability and dietary diversity were measured to capture the diet quantity and quality dimensions of food security of households. A seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model results of the two measures suggested that the mean daily calorie intake per adult equivalent and dietary diversity level of households were about 1871 kcal and 6.8, respectively, with significant differences in farming systems and household idiosyncratic characteristics. The univariate probit model results show that the likelihood of households to be food security was 42.3%, while their probability to have semi-diversified diet was 37.2%. However, food security status and dietary diversity status were weakly interdependent and their determinant factors were significantly different. The major contribution of this paper is that it employs econometric estimation of dietary diversity scores and status and measures their interactions with diet quantity scales and food security status at household level. Key words: Food security, dietary diversity, seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model, bivariate probit.
Highlights
The main development objective of the Ethiopian Government is poverty eradication and the country's development policies and strategies are geared towards this end (MoFED, 2006; FDRE, 2012)
The consumption inequality measured by the Gini coefficient was 0.21 and 0.22, respectively, in Central and Hararghe highlands which are nearly similar to the 0.27 national rural consumption inequality estimated in the year 2010/11 (FDRE, 2012)
A number of empirical studies conducted on the subject have proven that food security policies and intervention mechanisms require relevant and inclusive empirical evidence on factors related to poverty reduction and enhancement of food security
Summary
The main development objective of the Ethiopian Government is poverty eradication and the country's development policies and strategies are geared towards this end (MoFED, 2006; FDRE, 2012). Smallholder farming is the dominant livelihood activity for the majority of Ethiopians, but it is the major source of vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity (Brown and Teshome, 2007). To combat this problem, the Ethiopian Government has designed food security policy and strategy which was first issued in 1996 within the framework of Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (FDRE, 1996; FDRE, 2004). The Ethiopian Government has designed food security policy and strategy which was first issued in 1996 within the framework of Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (FDRE, 1996; FDRE, 2004) In this regard, agriculture is assumed to be a strong option for spurring growth, overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security.
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