ABSTRACT

The struggle to achieve food security at the household level in the rural areas of Ethiopia dates back
a long period, it has remained as a challenging goal even today. Making their living on marginal,
moisture stressed, heavily degraded and less productive land, households in rural areas of Jimma face
persistent food shortages. The design and implementation of effective measures to reduce household
food insecurity in the region depends on in-depth understanding of its covariates. This study seeks to
address these issues by assessing location specific socio-economic factors that influence food
insecurity of households in rural areas of Jimma area Administrative region. The analysis is based on
survey data gathered from randomly selected 115 sample rural households. A binary logit model will
be used to identify the factors influencing household level food insecurity. A total of important
explanatory variables will be included in the empirical model. Among variables considered, family
size, annual income, amount of credit received, access to irrigation, age of household head, farm
size, and livestock owned showed theoretically consistent and statistically significant effect. The
findings will imply that improvement in food security situation needs to build assets, improve the
functioning of rural financial markets and promote family planning. The area could provide entry
points for policy intervention to reduce hunger and augment household and community livelihood
opportunities.
1. BACKGROUND
Agricultural growth in sub-Saharan Africa averaged nearly 3 percent over the past 25 years. This is
partly attributed to their agro-climatic potential, poor infrastructure and the dismantling of public
agricultural institutions for research, extension, credit and marketing. A number of initiatives have
emerged or are emerging to address this important challenge. Despite the many efforts, deepening
food crises in several developing countries specially those in sub-Saharan Africa is still the concern
of many researchers, planners, donors and international development agencies, who have given high
priority to the study of food systems and the problem of food security. Despite the availability of
resources and the efforts made by governments, food insecurity and declining food production per
capita remained among the most crucial issues. The attainment of an increase in food grain
production above the population growth is still a challenge for most countries.

Food security is the condition in which all have access to sufficient food to live healthy and
productive lives. Food security is dependent on agricultural production, food imports and donations,
employment opportunities and income earnings, intra-household decision-making and resource
allocation, health care utilization and caring practices. It is a multi-dimensional development issue
that needs cross-sectoral integrated approaches. However, because there are concerns that such
approaches can be too costly, too complicated or take too long to show results, institutions may not
invest their scarce resources in implementing them. 

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Moreover, household food security issues cannot be seen in isolation from broader factors such as
physical, policy and social environment. The physical factors play a large role in determining the
type of activities that can be undertaken by rural households. Government policies, on the other
hand, have a strong effect on the design and implementation of household food security
interventions.

In many countries growing competition for food crop land and fluctuating markets are putting
pressure on existing food supply systems. In addition, the effects of climate change are also reducing
the amount of agricultural land available. This affects in particular sub- Saharan African countries in
which the food situation is already unstable. Therefore, measures to stabilize and develop the food
supply are particularly important in these regions particularly, Jimma area, Ethiopia. For instance,
new knowledge and capacity building can make an effective contribution to improve the food
situation. Also supporting and increasing productivity and income in agriculture and striking a
balance between demand and supply are central challenges of securing the food supply. Food
systems with a) use of resources (soil, water, nutrients, energy, labour), b) the use of additional
means of production (technical devices, fertilizers, animal feed, seeds and plants), c) the safety and
quality of food, d) the consumption and dietary patterns, e) adapted cropping, harvesting, husbandry
and storage methods, and f) markets. The processes along the agricultural food value chain from
sowing to the consumption of agricultural products are regarded as part of a specific cultural,
political, social, ecological and economic environment.

Increasing global demand for food, but also for feed and biomass-based raw materials, e.g. fuel and
fiber crops, has increased pressure on the agricultural sector and food production in the past decade,
especially in Africa. Concepts to increase food security while attending growing demands for non-
food biomass and developing alternative biomass sources are still in their infant stages. Making their
living on marginal and moisture stressed, and heavily degraded and less productive land, households
in rural areas of Jimma area are facing unrelenting food shortages. On top of ever decreasing land
holding size and increasing population, recurrent drought and resource (land, water, forest and
rangeland) degradation in the area have made the food security situation worse. Realizing this issue,
many governmental and non-governmental organizations are intervening at least to lessen the
adverse effects of the food problem, but there is yet little success. Cognizant of these facts, this
research is designed to address the following research questions and identify location specific factors
that contributed to household food insecurity, and through that make recommendations to improve
the effectiveness of interventions.

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 2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 What are the production characteristics of an intensive maize-based farming system in Jimma
area?
 What are the particular interests and roles of local actors in Jimma area?
 Which state and non-state institutions influence actors’ decision-making and in what ways?
 What incentives and disincentives determine family farmers’ decisions to produce food or non-
food products in the exemplified farming system of in Jimma area?
 What are the potentials and limitations of family farming households to contribute to and benefit
from exemplified biomass-based value webs?
 How far can biomass-based value webs contribute to the reduction of risks and vulnerability of
family farming households in Jimma area?
3. RESEARCH METHODS
3.1 Location Map of the research area
Jimma area, the research area is located in Oromya region, Ethiopia (Figure 1).

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Figure 3.1. Location map of the Research area
3.2 Data Collection, Analysis and Evaluation of Data
A two-stage random sampling procedure was used to select limited rural households in Jima area. At
the first stage, some peasant associations (PAs) will be selected randomly. In the second stage,
probability proportional to size sampling technique will be employed to draw sample households
from the selected sample PAs. A structured survey questionnaire will be designed and pre-tested to
collect the primary data. The household head will be the main respondent. The questionnaire will try
to encompass information on demographic characteristics, crop and livestock production, farming
systems and productive resources, land use, access to services, as well as coping strategies employed
by the households during time of food shortage.

Once the groups are categorized as food-secure and food-insecure, the next step is to identify the
socio-economic factors that are correlated with food-insecurity. It is hypothesized that some farm
and household characteristics such as household size, land size and level of agricultural production
have got relative importance in determining whether a household is food secured or not. A variety of
statistical models can be used to establish the relationship between these household characteristics
and food insecurity. Conventionally, regression analysis is widely used in most economic and social
investigation. The use of the logit model is recommended as a panacea of the drawback of the
regression model. Therefore, this study will also employ the logit model following the footstep of
these researchers. The dependent variable in this case, food insecurity, was a binary variable which
took a value one if a household is found to be food insecure, zero otherwise.

A stratified random sampling will be used to select participants. Regression analyses will be used to
compare the food security status. This study is based on data from 2009 adolescents enrolled in the
first two consecutive rounds of the five year longitudinal study of adolescents in Jimma zone,
Ethiopia. The study area will be stratified into urban (Jimma city) and eight rural communities
"kebeles" adjacent to the towns, representing a range of ecological and developmental contexts. A
two-stage sampling plan will be used to select a representative sample of 1500 households. The data
will be entered in double, checked for missing values and outliers and analyzed using SPSS Inc.
version 16.1, logit model and a multivariable regression model will be used. Normality of the data
will be assessed visually using a P-P plot for all numerical predictor variables and for the dependent
variables in the regression model.

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 3. WORK PLAN
No Activities Time (year, months)
. 2015 2016
Ap Ma Ju Ju Au Se Oc No De Ja Fe Ma Ap
r r n l g p t v c n b r r
1 Proposal
writing
2 Data
collection
and
analysis
3 PhD
Dissertatio
n write up