The impact of off-farm activities on rural households’ food security status in Western Ethiopia: The case of Dibatie district

Abstract

This paper was analyzed the impact of off-farm activities on food security status of rural households in the Dibatie district of the Bebishangul Gumuz region. The study was used in a simple random sampling technique to select respondent households with proportionate sample size based on the number of households exist in sampled kebele administrations. The primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire and key informants’ interview. Both descriptive statistics and econometric model (an endogenous switching probit) were used to analyze this data at household levels. This model accounts for selection bias resulting from unobserved factors that potentially affect both household’s participation and food security outcomes and also the model shows the counterfactual case of food security outcomes. Food security index is used to measure the food security status of sample households based on average kCal/day/adult equivalent. The result of this study revealed that about 59.4% of the households were food secure and 40.6% of households were food insecure. And also, about 55.4% of the households were off-farm participants and 44.6% of households were off-farm non-participants. Moreover, computing switch_probit command, the impacts of participant household have higher probability of food security status as compared with the counterfactual case of non-participants. In addition, the model result shows that variables such as household size, distance to the nearest market, age of household head, education level of household head, special skill, utilization of formal credit, access to electricity and frequency of extension contact were found to have a significant influence on off-farm participation. Finally, the study suggesting that the interventions designed to promote farmers participating in off-farm activities that are made to increase food security status at the household level in the study area. This is because there could be increased productivity effects in this off-farm economy, better agricultural linkages and indeed, stronger structural transformation of the rural economy.