The Effect of Farmers’ Participation in Soil and Water Conservation Practices in Their Household Food Security Together with Other Determinant Factors in Farta Woreda, South Gondar Zone, Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the impacts of soil and water conservation activities on household food security status together with other factors in Farta woreda, South Gondar Zone. In this study a two stage sampling procedure was employed to select 6 sample kebeles out of 41 and 381 sample households out of 8230 in the sampled kabala’s using simple random sampling. The primary data were collected using pre-tested structured questionnaire. Categorization of households in to food secure and insecure was done based on the cost of 2200 kcal per day per adult which was determined to be 1985 birr per year per adult person as food poverty line for Ethiopia. The result revealed that only 35.67% of sample households participated in soil and water conservation activities voluntarily and about 70.34% and 29.66% of sample households were food insecure and secure groups respectively with the average 21 percent food gap for insecure households. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression model was employed to identify rural household food security status. The result of binary logit model revealed variables such as participation index, age, family size, education level, off-farm income, farm income, size of cultivated land, soil fertility problem, ox ownership and dependence ratio were found to be significant determinants of rural household food security status. Thus development partners should made effort to increase farmers’ participation in soil and water conservation and activities should be done in integrated way to maintain the food security level of households. Moreover attention should be given to those factors that were found to affect both farmers’ participation and households’ food security status in the study area.

Keywords: Participation, Soil and Water Conservation, Food Security, Binary Logistic Regression