Review on Contribution of Fruits and Vegetables on Food Security in Ethiopia

Abstract

Fruits and vegetables are providing an abundant, cheap source of fiber and several vitamins and minerals. In general, they have the highest nutritional value when eaten fresh, although an exception may be fermented foods, in which the process of fermentation can increase the content of B-vitamins.  Fruit and vegetable (F&V) production, individual F&V intake, household food security, and anemia levels for individual women caregivers of childbearing age. The number of small-scale producers involved in horticulture is estimated at 5.7 million farmers. The area under vegetables increased from 350,600 ha with production of 2.36 million tons in 2010 to 396,510 ha with production of 4.48 million tons in 2013 for smallholder farmers. Ethiopia mainly due to cereal based food habit is practicing and largely affects children’s in most part of the country. Many research reports indicated that an estimated five million people are suffering from lack of vitamins and essential minerals. In general 60 to 80 % of health problems in Ethiopia are due communicable diseases and nutritional problems. Ethiopia has got an immense potential to develop intensive vegetable production especially at commercial scale. In general, the drawback to this sector include social and cultural habits of the population like dietary preferences for meat and other animal products, and distaste for vegetable crops, lack of consumer awareness, economic reasons of the local consumers, absence of nutrition intervention program using vegetables. The use of a qualitative tool to measure household food insecurity is robust and applicable in other contexts. Furthermore, F&V-producer households are potentially more food secure, and women caregivers in producer households have significantly higher levels of hemoglobin, rendering the prevalence rates of anemia lower among F&V-producer households. We argue that these effects, modest as they are, could be further improved if there were deliberate efforts to promote the intensification of smallholder F&V production. This paper aims to review on Contribution of fruits and vegetables in food security in Ethiopia.

Keywords: Contribution; Fruits and vegetables; food security Introduction