The agriculture sector in Ethiopia plays pivotal roles in economic growth, poverty alleviation, employment creation, foreign exchange earnings and food security. Despite the enormous contribution over the past years, its significance is limited because of various factors and hence it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet the food requirements of the growing population (Jon, 2007; Abera, 2011; UNDP, 2013). One of the significant contributors for its deprived performance is the low productivity of the sector in general and cereal production in particular over the past years (Alemayehu, 2009; Alemayehu et al. 2012). Such low productivity leads to increasing poverty and food insecurity of rural poor farm households in the country.
Other challenges affecting food and nutrition security include high prices and the main concern is food price inflation that often exceeds the general inflation. Furthermore, climate change is considered a major greatest threat to agriculture and food security in the 21st century, particularly in many of the poor, agriculture-based countries of sub-Saharan Africa with their low capacity to effectively cope. The impacts of climate change already being experienced in many parts of the world are expected to lead to disproportionately negative food insecurity
As a result, thousands are starving and becoming malnourished. It will continue if nothing is done. This famine has harmed human beings and has put them under stress. Thus, they have little food and are experiencing many hardships. The food security in Somalia has dropped substantially due to a famine that has caused thousands to die from starvation, if there is no aid given to these malnourished people, the country will break down in security causing people to be defenseless and at risk.
The country’s low level of economic development combined with its heavy dependence on agriculture and high population growth rate make the country particularly susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change. Negative impacts of climate change on crop and livestock production could result in a nationwide food shortage and greatly hinder the
Poverty is the main reason for the world hunger. People living in poverty cannot afford to pay for the nutritious food. They are trap in the poverty and couldn 't escape the poverty cycle. There are more than one billion people who currently live below the international poverty line and undernourished. Undernourishment negatively affects people 's heath, productivity and diseases.
This phenomenon has continued to be the most important development challenge of Ethiopia (FAO, 2012; Anderson & Farmer, 2015; Anderson, 2010; Asefa, 2003). These authors have confirmed that the major challenge is ensuring food security in which the problem is multidimensional in nature because of the prevalence of shock and stress risks. In Ethiopia, households’ capacity to manage risks is low due to multiple stressors coupled with poor asset base, making them particularly less resilient to food insecurity (Devereux et al., 2008; MoARD, 2009). As past studies confirmed, the low resilience to food insecurity is attributed to low agricultural production and productivity, non-farm employment, low income, low market integration, biophysical resources degradation, low level of farm technology, limited access to basic education and low quality, inadequate health and sanitation, population growth, poor governance, etc. (Asefa, 2003; FAO, 2012; 2017; Bewket, 2009; Beyene & Muche, 2010; Gilligan & Hoddinott, 2006).
Due to high illiteracy rates and lack of trainings, rural people lack entrepreneurial skills and knowledge of technology that they need to improve their living standards. The limited access to credits and financial services, increasing cost of goods and services also aggravate poverty in rural areas. The other cause of poverty is natural calamities. According to Wangdi (2015) since Bhutan lies in a mountainous region, our ecosystem is very fragile and prone to impact of climate change. Occurrence of flash flood and rising temperature will cause severe damage to our cropland since our agricultural land is located on slopes eventually affecting country’s food security.
Besides erratic and unreliable rainfall, the inefficient use of agricultural resources and unsustainable farming practices that lead to soil degradation are main drivers of low agricultural production and productivity. Low agricultural productivity, coupled with erratic rainfall, frequent severe droughts, land degradation,
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Food insecurity is inability and difficulty to access to nutritious and adequate food at all times for all peoples. It leads to peopleto hunger and malnutrition.Hungeris the inability to eat enough food and leads to malnutrition. Malnutrition is the lack of necessary nutrients in the diet. These conditions hinder the community to be productive and healthy to perform different development activities. If it is not alleviated and sustain over a period of time it creates a vicious circle of destitution and being a problem of sustainable development.
Drought frequently results in crop failure, while high rainfall intensities result in low infiltration and high runoff causing enhanced soil erosion and land degradation. Land degradation in the form of soil erosion and declining land fertility is a serious challenge to agricultural productivity and economic growth (Lemenih,