Analysis of Food Insecurity and Coping Mechanisms among Rural Women in Boripe Local Government Area of Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was based on food insecurity level and coping mechanisms among the rural women in Boripe local government area, of Osun state. The study therefore examined the level of food insecurity and coping mechanisms among the rural women.

The broad objective of the study was to determine the level of food insecurity and coping strategies among the different respondents in Boripe Local government area of Osun state. The study utilized multi stage sampling technique which involved more than one sample stage and systematic random sampling technique to get the required sample for the study, which gives room for 120 well-structured questionnaires. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, food insecurity coping strategy and household food insecurity scale (HFIAS) and Logit regression model. The findings revealed that most of the respondents were in their active age and most were not. Al respondents were females with 72.5% married.

Few  (30%) of the respondents never worry about their households food security, 46.7% sometimes had to eat a limited variety of food 30.0% rarely ate a limited variety of food and only 16.7% could eat the variety of food they wanted based on the insecurity condition where house members had to eat some food that they didn’t really want to eat 20%, had nothing to worry about, 39.2% rarely did 32.5% sometimes had to and only 8.3% often had to worry about this insecurity condition.

37.5% of the respondent always had food to eat, 41.7% rarely ran out of food14.2% sometimes ran out of food and only6.7% of the total respondent often had no food to eat of any kind in their household. 37.5% of the respondent never went to bed hungry, Furthermore, the result indicated that 70% of the respondents were food insecure while only 30% were food secure.