THE STATUS OF FOOD INSECURITY IN OROMIA REGIONAL STATE: THE CASE OF SUDE DISTRICT

This study is concerned about the status of food insecurity in Oromia regional state: the case of Sude district to find out the level of insecurity; determinants of rural food insecurity; shocks faced and coping strategies of food insecurity household employed in the study area. I used probability sampling technique to select the households for the study. A multistage sampling method was employed to select the sample households. First, the district was stratified based on agro-ecology into three; and three kebeles (i.e., Akia Molota, Halila Nagele and Manga Welkite kebeles) out of 17 were randomly selected. Finally, a total of 363 sampled household heads were randomly selected from three kebeles. Both primary and secondary data were collected in order to achieve objectives of the study. Questionnaire interview and FGD were used as methods of data collection. The researcher useddescriptive and binary logistic regression technique to analysis the data. The HFIAS indicator of food insecurity revealed that 9.91% of the households have food insecurity situation that runs from high severity 35.54%. The shocks that household faced was that rise of price of food, prevailing drought within the interval of 5-10 years, crop damage as a result of flood and shortage of rainfall and deaths of livestock. The consumption based coping strategies that they utilized ranges from compromising the quality of food they eat to that of food rationing. The cross-tabulation of the consumption based, livelihood-based and insurance–based coping strategies and the nine (9) household categories of HFIAS indicated that the rate of utilization of a particular coping strategy increases as the severity of the level of food insecurity increases. The occurrence of structural, demographic, economic, and sociocultural factors accelerated poverty and seasonal food insecurity problem in the study area. Expansion and strengthening the off-farm activities in the study area was too important to increase the income of the households. I also recommend thatfood insecurity intervention should integrate with the level, determinants and shocks of food insecurity to reduce their pressure on household on the available scarce resource.Alsoimproving the determinants like, soil fertility, use of fertilizer, use of extension, and infrastructure would increase the productivity of the land.Improving the productivity of cash crop and livestock through the provision of adequate veterinary services, water supply and other services would decrease food insecurity in the study area.
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