ISSN 2375-1177
African Journal of Agriculture and Food Security Vol. 2 (1), pp. 106-112, September, 2014. © International Scholars Journals
Full Length Research Paper
Determinants of rural household food insecurity in Laelay Maichew Woreda Tigray, Ethiopia
Shishay Kahsay and Messay Mulugeta
College of Agriculture, Aksum University, Shire, Ethiopia. College of Geography and Environmental studies, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Email:sssk2002@gmail.com
Accepted 13 February, 2014
Abstract
The study was conducted in Tigray, Laelay Maichew woreda. Different concepts and empirical findings are profoundly organized and presented. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The primary data was collected using survey questionnaires, key informant interview, focus group discussion and observation. One hundred fifty households were randomly selected for the survey type while secondary data were collected from published and unpublished materials. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple linear regressions. To undertake regression analysis, linearity, normality and homoscedasticity tests were employed. For the multiple regression analysis, total calorie availability/adult equivalent/day was taken as dependent variable and 16 explanatory variables were taken. Off these variables only five variables are found to be significant at 95% confidence level and the selected explanatory variables explains 39.9% of the variation in calorie availability. In general, age of household head, use of improved seeds, number of TLU/household, number of adult equivalent/household and land size in hectare were found to be significant at 95% (α=0.05) confidence level. The government should exhaustively work on promoting irrigation, providing credit and subsidize the farmers to solve the problem of food insecurity.
Key words: Food security, household, Linear regression, Food insecurity, Laelay Maichew, Tigray.