Determinants of food insecurity and coping strategies of rural households: The case of Shalla District, West Arsi Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Food security at the household level in the rural areas of Ethiopia has remained a challenging goal until today. The design and implementation of effective measures to reduce household food insecurity needs an in depth understanding of its covariates. As a result, this study was conducted with the specific objectives of estimating the situation, extent and severity of food insecurity, identifying factors influencing food insecurity and the traditional coping mechanisms used by farm households in fighting food shortage in Shalla district of West Arsi zone, Oromia region. In order to achieve these objectives, data were collected from 150 randomly selected households in three randomly selected kebeles of the district. Data was analyzed using both descriptive statistics and econometric method. The results from descriptive statistics showed that of the total surveyed households, 62% were food insecure. In addition, results revealed that there was statistically significant difference between food insecure and food secure households with regard to different demographic, economic and institutional factors. Furthermore, the self-reported months of food shortage of the surveyed households was on average 3.5 months for which they have used different traditional coping strategies. The food insecurity gap and severity of the sampled households computed using Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) indices were 8.5 and 1.4%, respectively. The results of binary logit model showed that family size in Adult equivalent (AE), age and dependency ratio had significant and positive effect on food insecurity, while gender, cultivated land, livestock ownership in Tropical livestock units (TLU), oxen ownership, fertilizer use and income from safety net had a significant and negative effect on food insecurity. Key words:  Food insecurity, Logit, Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (FGT) indexes, Shalla.