Causes Of Insecurity In Dembia

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Causes for Insecurity of Food

As historic evidence shows that in Ethiopia, each time when a food crisis occurred; there was always a complex interaction of supply, distribution and demand factors. It is these processes at work on national and household levels that determine outcomes for food security, food availability, access and use (Webb and von Braun, 1994). Even though crop production failure is recognized by this research as a major cause of household food insecurity in Dembia district, the information which is gained from focus group discussions indicate that failure of government policy, institutional weakness, organizational and market failures also play significant roles.

With rapid increasing of population, in Dembia district the …show more content…

In the absence of guaranteed source of irrigation, more than half of the arable land is used for growing few food Cereals only once in a year, which restricts the employment opportunity for the members of the house hold, it means these farmers have only 120-150 regular work days in a year. In the absence of employment opportunity from industrial and service sectors, the district households have no source of employment which directly affects their income and purchasing power. The informants said that the low purchasing power leads them to threaten by food insecurity.

Besides low income, other causes for food insecurity in the study area are lack of credit facilities particularly to obtain food during the lean season, inadequate food distribution outlets and non availability of different varieties of food grains.

Problem of Low Agricultural Production: As most of the households own small and poor quality of land and are deprived of irrigation and necessary inputs, the crop yields are low and home grown food grains are not adequate to satisfy their …show more content…

In Dembia district people have to walk a distance of 10-15 km to buy food grains from the fair price shops. The local traders exploit the illiterate and poor households by charging higher price for the food grains along with high interest rate, for supply of food on a credit basis. It is a common practice in the district particularly in the rural areas, where poor farmers borrow food grains from local traders during the rainy season and settle their dues after the harvest by returning almost twice the quantity of grains borrowed before few months. Such people are generally threatened by food insecurity. Non availability of different varieties of food grains of local choice is another significant factor for malnutrition in the study

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