Harambee University

Faculty of Business and Economics

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Article review Group Assignment for the Course

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Instructor

February 2022

Adama, Ethiopia
Vol. 5(5), pp. 174-185, May, 2013
DOI: 10.5897/JDAE12.141
ISSN 2006-9774 © 2013 Academic Journals
http://www.academicjournals.org/JDAE

Journal of Development and Agricultural

Economics

Full Length Research Paper

Measuring diet quantity and quality dimensions of food security in rural Ethiopia

Degye Goshu*, Belay Kassa and Mengistu Ketema

School of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Haramaya University, P.O. Box: 05,
Haramaya University, Ethiopia.

Accepted 4 March, 2013

1. Title
As it was earlier proposed one of the measure of the quality of a research is its relevancy and clearly
stated topic. In this regard the issue of security critical particularly for under developed countries likes
Ethiopia. Hence, the title is clear and to the point.

2. Background of the study

As it was indicated in the introductory part of the research the issue of food security in terms of
quantity and quality was discussed in depth from different angles.

The main development objective of the Ethiopian Government is poverty eradication and the country's
development policies and strategies are geared towards this end (MoFED, 2006; FDRE, 2012).
Smallholder farming is the dominant livelihood activity for the majority of Ethiopians, but it is also
the major source of vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity (Brown and Teshome, 2007). To
combat this problem, the Ethiopian Government has designed food security policy and strategy which
was first issued in 1996 within the framework of Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (FDRE, 1996;
FDRE, 2004). In this regard, agriculture is assumed to be a strong option for spurring growth,
overcoming poverty, and enhancing food security. It is a vital development tool for achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDG), one of which is to halve by 2015 the share of people
suffering from extreme poverty and hunger (World Bank, 2008).

In the 1970s, definitions of food security emphasized a nation’s aggregate food production but since
then the focus is the ability of poor households to gain access to food in the necessary amounts.
According to FAO (1996) food security is assumed to exist “when all people, at all times, have
physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and
food preferences for an active and healthy life”.
 3. Objective of the study

In a research both objectives are pillar of the research. In this study,

The general objective is the title of the research which is “Measuring diet quantity and quality
dimensions of food security in rural Ethiopia.” And the specific objectives were dimensions of food
security are food availability, stability of supply; accessibility of food, and quality and safety of food.
Access, sufficiency, and quality are important aspects of the definition of food security which should be
addressed by food security indicators.

4. Methodology

Sampling technique and the dataset

This study used primary data collected from four districts selected from two major sedentary farming
systems in Ethiopia, Central and Hararghe highlands. These two sedentary farming systems cover about
40% of the total sedentary farming systems in Ethiopia (Getahun, 1980; Dercon and Hoddinott, 2009).
Because the study areas are heterogeneous in terms of their food security situation, two-stage stratified
random sampling technique was employed. In the first stage, districts were stratified into two as highland
and non highland. Two districts from highland areas were randomly selected from each farming system.
In the second stage, kebeles – the lowest administrative levels – were stratified by their food security
situation as better-off and worse-off. One kebele was randomly selected from each stratum.

Finally, a total of 260 rural households were randomly selected from eight kebeles proportionate to the
number of households in each district and kebele. Because weights were given to farming systems, the
samples were also proportionate at the two farming systems level. Stratification procedures at each stage
were carefully employed to increase homogeneity within a food security stratum and heterogeneity
between strata so that precision and sampling efficiency would be maximized. To overcome the problem
of bias in collecting data on food security indicators, the survey was conducted in two phases depending
on the harvesting periods and fasting months in the two farming systems. This timing of survey periods
was expected to minimize the variability of household consumption prevalently observed to be skewed
left and right during harvest and before harvest periods, respectively.

Methodologically, it is simple if continuous measures of food security are estimated. However, it is also
often useful, both for policy and research purposes, to simplify the food security scale into a small set of
categories, each one representing a meaningful range of severity on the underlying scale, and to discuss
the percentage of the population in each of these categories. In this study, the measures of food security
were treated as both continuous and categorical variables. A household was treated as either food secure
or insecure based on its amount of calorie availability per adult equivalent, or may fall at a lower or higher
level on the food insecurity continuum. Dietary diversity levels were measured from the counts of food
items consumed by households. Households were also treated as having medium and low dietary diversity
status depending on the number of food groups they consumed.

The endogenous variables used as food security indicators were daily calorie availability per adult
equivalent, food security status, dietary diversity scores/levels, and dietary diversity status. These food
security indicators were hypothesized to be primarily determined by a household’s resource endowment.
As such, the expected determinants of food security measures were categorized into five based on their
resource endowment as humane capital (family size, farming experience, dependency ratio, literacy status,
sex of the household head), social capital (degree of civic engagement and/or responsibility as a proxy for
social networks and social class), physical capital (pattern of cultivated land allocation, livestock holding,
number of oxen owned, total assets owned), financial capital (income earned, access to credit or amount
of credit received), natural capital (irrigation water use, proportion of land under irrigation), and a dummy
variable for the farming systems as a proxy to capture omitted location-specific characteristics.
5. Finding/Result
Data description
Two important dimensions of food security were analyzed through two basic indicators of food security:
diet quantity and diet quality. The dichotomous classification of households based on their daily calorie
availability suggested that 42.7% of the households were food secure, while the rest majorities (57.3%)
were food insecure or calorie-deficient. The frequency distribution of counts of food items suggested that
most households consumed five kinds of food items grouped under three food categories. The binomial
classification of households by their level of diet diversity into two status as ‘medium diversity’ and ‘low
diversity’ showed that only 40% of the households consumed more than three food groups, suggesting
that the rest majority faced low diet quality.

The estimated income and consumption inequalities among households were decomposed into their
constituent income and calorie sources as reported in Table 2. The consumption inequality measured by
the Gini coefficient was 0.21 and 0.22, respectively, in Central and Hararghe highlands which are nearly
similar to the 0.27 national rural consumption inequality estimated in the year 2010/11 (FDRE, 2012).
The four food groups used as major sources of household calorie consumption were cereals, roots, and
tubers, pulses and legumes, livestock products, and fats and oils. Consumption of cereals, roots and tubers
and oils and fats were household calorie sources enabling to reduce consumption inequality in rural
Ethiopia. As expected in developing countries, the estimated share in total inequality suggested that
consumption inequality was predominantly contributed by consumption of cereal, roots and tubers. The
marginal effects indicated that a unit percentage increase in consumption of cereals, roots and tubers
reduced consumption inequality by about 0.06%. However, consumption on pulses and legumes and
livestock products was source of consumption inequality. On the other hand, the sample households had
total income inequality of about 0.45, higher than the national rural income inequality estimated in the
same period (0.30), while it was lower in Central highlands (0.38) but higher in Hararghe highlands
(0.52). This income inequality was twofold higher than the consumption inequality. Production of crops
seems the sole determinant of income inequality in both farming systems. A unit percentage increase in
crop income reduced total income inequality by about 1.4%.
6. Conclusions
Food insecurity in Ethiopia, like most developing countries, is an overriding problem of development
policy agenda. A number of empirical studies conducted on the subject have proven that food security
policies and intervention mechanisms require relevant and inclusive empirical evidence on factors related
to poverty reduction and enhancement of food security. This study profoundly examines the food security
situation of farm households in Hararghe and Central highlands of Ethiopia and estimates the link
between food security measures. Using the major indicators, food security situation of rural households
was very low or poor, 57.3% of them suffering from food insecurity problems, primarily dependent on
staples for their food energy source, and consuming on a few number of food groups. Food security
problems were significantly different across farming systems and household idiosyncrasy. Households in
Central highlands were relatively better-off in their daily calorie intake and food security status, while
they were worse-off in their dietary diversity level and status.

The daily calorie intake and dietary diversity scores of households were positively interdependent,
verifying the expectation that households with better dietary diversity were able to have better diet
quantity. The simultaneous estimation of household daily calorie intake and dietary diversity scores
suggested that the most important determinants of daily calorie intake were female heads, family size,
literacy status, total cultivated land, irrigation water use, quantity of fertilizer used, participation in off
farm activity, road distance, and other exogenous shocks. On the other hand, dietary diversity was
determined by female heads, literacy status, irrigation water use, live- Goshu et al. 183 stock holding,
annual income, farming system, and other exogenous factors. On average, households obtained about
1878.7 kcal per day per adult equivalent and consumed only 6.8 number of food items a week, with
significant difference by farming systems in which the households operate.

Households’ food security status was determined by female heads, cultivated land, quantity of chemical
fertilizer used, annual gross income, access to credit, family size, land allocated to staples, and irrigation
water use. The likelihood of households to be food secure was 42.3% with largely different probabilities
and marginal effects among farming systems, irrigation water use, and credit access. Households’ dietary
diversity status, on the other hand, was determined by literacy statuses, livestock holding, annual income,
farming system, and the constant term. The probability of households to have semi-diversified diet was
37.2% with significant difference between farming systems and literacy status of household heads. The
vicariate probity estimation of food security status and dietary diversity status of households suggested
that these two nonlinear measures were not strongly and significantly interdependent. Accordingly, it is
imperative to design appropriate food security intervention strategies since households are more likely to
fail in achieving these two-pronged objectives because of limited resource endowments, marketing
problems, and other exogenous shocks.
7. Recommendations
Very important policy implications are derived from this study. One of the basic problems of developing
countries like Ethiopia is lack of budge to assess food security situations of households. Estimation of diet
quantity available to households is costly, cumbersome and more susceptible to misreporting. The
positive linear interdependence between diet quantity and diet diversity is an important evidence to
employ cost-effective method of assessing food security situations in Ethiopia. Because dietary diversity
of households is associated with their calorie intake, the government can initiate extensive and rapid food
security assessment schemes with limited budget in order to formulate and implement relevant food
security policies, strategies, and programs. Monitoring of effectiveness of such food security programs
will also be cost-effective if dietary intake method of food security analysis is employed.
Idiosyncratic features were significantly influencing food security status of households. Family size was
strongly and adversely affecting food security status which necessitates accelerated policy interventions in
family planning in order to lessen its negative effects. Literacy status, on the other hand, was an important
characteristic feature of household heads in improving daily calorie intake and scale and status of dietary
diversity. The current effort in Ethiopia to have educated farmers will have to improve households’
calorie supply and dietary diversity in the long run. However, it is also vital to promote adult education in
order to improve positive nutritional effects of literacy of farm household in the short run. Moreover,
households in the two farming systems have strongly and significantly differentiated socioeconomic
characteristic features and other unobserved heterogeneities which would influence their food security
situations differently. This is a strong empirical evidence to suggest the need to formulate policies and
strategies which should take into account these differentials. Policies related to household food security
should incorporate these idiosyncratic features and spatial covariate changes in order to achieve food
security objectives in different farming systems of the country.

Land allocation pattern of households was adversely and strongly affecting their food security condition.
But quantity of chemical fertilizer used was significantly enhancing food security of households.
Promoting and supporting smallholders to make optimal land allocation decision and to use production
inputs like fertilizer will further improve household food availability through increased production and
productivity. Asset holdings were also important factors influencing diet quality dimensions of household
food security, calling the need to improve physical and financial asset holdings through income
diversification interventions.