Determinants of Rural Household Food Security in Wolaita Zone, South Ethiopia

This study attempted to adders the determinants of rural household food security in Wolaita zone, Southern Ethiopia with the specific objective of Assessing rural households’ food security status and identifying the determinant factors of food security of rural households in the study area. In order to achieve these objectives, 180 respondents were selected from, three Woredas were selected purposively because considering the size of people, mostly affected by food shortage and the number of the beneficiary of safety net programme and food aid from the others in the zone and from each Woreda two rural kebeles selected by using systematic random sampling following probability proportional sampling procedure. Both primary and secondary data were used and qualitative and quantitative types of data were employed. The data regarding the determinants of rural household food security were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, percentage and frequency distribution. Inferential statistics such as t-test and chi-square tests were also used to describe characteristics of food secure and insecure groups. Furthermore, Binary logit model were applied. The survey result shows that from the total sample respondents 33.2% and 67.8% was food secure and insecure, respectively. As a result, out of the hypothesized variables which were included in the binary Logit model, 5 variables showed statistically significant relationship with household food security. These are family size of household, educational status of household head, Total annual income of households, Total livestock unit and Oxen ownership of the household. The model estimate correctly predicted 95.6% of the sample cases, 91.4% food secure and 97.5% food insecure. Therefore more attention should be given to limit the increasing population growth through awareness creation and provision of education about use of family planning to both rural men and women on having more household size aggravate the problem of obtaining adequate food for healthy and active life and proper interventions towards improving oxen and livestock ownership through Credit Associations and animal health services are important through extension services.Micro and small scale enterprise should facilitate promoting and expanding income generating activities especially for those who have little or no land for cultivation. Keywords: Food security, Kilocalorie, binary logistic model, food securit