| Abstract: | Higher food security with life expectancy and total employment has a beneficial impact on
economic growth, reducing poverty, achieving food security, and boosting economic growth.
There are different socio-economic, demographic, infrastructural, and personal factors which
can affect households’ food security. With this in mind, this study examined the food security
level of households using Food Consumption Score (FCS), Household Dietary Diversity Score
(HDDS), Reduced Coping Strategy Index (rCSI), and Household Hunger Scale (HHS). And, to
identify the determinants of rural households’ food security using cross-sectional data from nine
Woredas of East Hararghe, Regional State of Oromia. The data used for this study was
secondary data collected by Catholic Relief Service (CRS) Ethiopia using a context monitoring
tool called Monthly Interval Resilience Analysis (MIRA). The general two-stage sampling
design was used, based on this 44 kebeles were selected from nine woredas with 20 households
in each kebele. Following this, a sample of 880 respondents was selected. To analyze data,
descriptive analysis, and econometric technique of ordered Logit regression were used. The
finding revealed that most of the respondents are poorly food secure. Using FCS, 674(77%),
179(20%), and 24(3%) are on poor, borderline, and acceptable levels of food security,
respectively. In addition, using HDDS, 476(54%), 330(38%), and 71(8%) have poor, borderline,
and acceptable levels of food security, respectively. Moreover, 245(28%), 608(69%), and
24(3%) are insecure, moderate/stressed, and food secure using rCSI, respectively, and
613(70%), 203(23%), 60(7%) 0(0%), and 1(0.001%) of respondents are on food secure,
stressed, insecure, crisis and catastrophe level of food security using HHS, respectively.
Additionally, the ordered logit model marginal effect found that age of household head, living
in Highland, dependency ratio, being Public Work PSNP beneficiary, livestock ownership and
taking farm related training have positive and significant effects on food security. Conversely,
credit access, off-farm activity engagement, and household size have negative significant effects.
Based on the result, government is recommended to prioritize key initiatives to bring social
behavior change and to enhance the PSNP interventions by collaborating with NGOs and
financial service providers to better improve the food security in the study area and beyond |
