Transitory coping strategies of food-insecure smallholder farmer households: the case of Ilu Gelan District, West Shoa Zone, Oromia Reginal State, Ethiopia

Global estimates of food-insecure populations stand at 825 million [1] to 850 million [2]. Regional estimates of the food-insecure population include 263 million in South Asia, 268 million in China and Southeast Asia, 2012 million in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), 60 million in South and Central America and the Caribbean, and 50 million in other regions of the world. Contrary to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals of cutting hunger by half by 2015, the number of food-insecure populations in the world has been on the rise [3]. The stock of food grains in the world in 2007/2008, the lowest in decades, was only 75 million tons for milled rice and 105 million tons for corn in early 2008 [4]. An estimated 75% of the world’s poor (those who live on less than < $2/day income) live in rural areas and depend directly or indirectly on agriculture [5]. Food prices are rising [6], leading to riots in 30 countries around the globe [7, 8]. Share of family income spent on food is estimated at 10% in the USA, 20% in Brazil, 30% in China, 50% in Kenya and 65% in Bangladesh [8], and 9.7 million people food-insecure Ethiopians require relief assistance to meet basic food needs [9]. Thus, the world poor are under great stress, and an increase in food prices is a threat to global peace and stability [3].

The absence of food security associated with coping strategies increasingly being used. Human beings can struggle to sustain their life when food shortages happen, because food is one of our most basic needs than shelter and cloth. Before coming to the modernization time, every society around the world has attempted to overcome food shortages at household levels. They practice certain activities to escape them from food insecurity. Many years ago, when the world population was much lower than it is now, a man had little difficulty in ordinarily time in growing the food that was needed. At that time, human beings started to lead their life in ancient time by hunting wild animals and gathering fruity crops.

Farmers have developed coping and adaptation strategies to buffer against the adverse effects of climate change and variability [10, 11] by altering their economies and lifestyles with changing circumstances in their environments [12], and the concepts were raised beyond the climate literature [13]. Coping and adaptation to climate change and variability are closely related and interchangeably used in the context of disaster response except that they have different time spans. Coping strategies are autonomous, short-term, location-specific actions and adjustments targeted against a certain hazard and activities that take place within existing structures [14–16]. Coping strategies help to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and variability for the short term, but they are “risk spreading” in nature [11].

On average, agriculture contributes 33% to national income, 70% to full-time employment and 40% to total export earnings in Africa [17]. Most of sub-Saharan Africa relies on agriculture for employment and food security for their economies. Even though agriculture is important for the national economy, it is highly dominated by smallholder farmers who produce under unfavorable conditions characterized by low and erratic rainfall and poor soils [18]. Agriculture in Ethiopia by large is subsistence [19]. Compared to other sectors, agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change which manifests itself in terms of longer-term trends in the average conditions of rainfall and temperature, inter-annual variability and the occurrence of droughts, floods, frosts and other extreme events [20]. Ethiopia’s economy is dependent on agriculture which is characterized by a low-input, low-output and subsistence production system [21]. It is extremely vulnerable to climate change and variability, resulting in vulnerability of smallholder farmers [22, 23]. Droughts and floods occur frequently in most parts of Ethiopia, indicating how the country is suffering from climate variability and extreme events, and future climate change constitutes a major development challenge [24]. Drought followed by flood is the most common climate-related hazard in Ethiopia [25, 26].

Rainfall variability and associated droughts have been the major causes of food insecurity and poverty traps for many households during the past three decades [27, 28]. In addition, since the water resource of the country is governed by the amount and distribution of rainfall [29, 30], the spatiotemporal variability and declining trend of rainfall have negative impacts on the water resource sector. Climate change is likely to change rainfall patterns, resulting in shorter growing seasons in the future, particularly for subsistence farmers in Africa who rely on rain fed agriculture [31]. Extreme weather events such as droughts and floods are predicted to become more frequent, adding to the global burden of hunger caused by poverty, weak governance, conflict and poor market access [32, 33]. A recent vulnerability mapping in Africa cited Ethiopia as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, food insecurity and with the least adaptive capacity [34, 35]. Its geographical and climatic conditions, high dependence on agriculture and weak adaptive capacity were stated as the major reasons for its vulnerability [35, 36]. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only region in the world where the number of hungry and malnourished populations will still be on the increase even by 2020 [37]. While other regions have improved per capita food availability since the 1970s, food production and availability have perpetually declined in sub-Saharan Africa. It is both a technological and a political/economic challenge and cannot be ignored any longer. Agrarian stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa has defined numerous attempts at transforming subsistence agriculture, even with due consideration to issues related to biophysical constraints and the human dimension challenges [38, 39]. Agriculture accounts about 41.6% of the GDP, employs about 83% of the labor force and contributes around 90% of the total export earnings of Ethiopia [19].

The sector is dominated by about 11.7 million smallholders cultivating about 95% of the national agricultural production, and large farms contributed to only 5% of the total production [40, 41]. This shows that the overall economy of the country depends on smallholder subsistence agriculture. Food production and population statistics in Ethiopia are notoriously unreliable, and all estimates of national food availability and consumption requirements are “guesstimates” at best [42]. Given this limitation of statistics during the late 1980s, 52% of Ethiopia’s population consumed less than the recommended daily allowance of 2100 kcal, and Ethiopian agriculture appears to be locked into a downward spiral of low and declining productivity, caused by an adverse combination of agro-climatic, demographic, economic and institutional constraints, trends and shocks. Some observers argue that a “Malthusian crisis” is developing as rapid population growth (almost 3% per annum) is associated with steadily falling landholdings and per capita food production [42]. Between 1960 and 1990, the population doubled from 23 to 48 million, while per capita landholding shrunk from 0.28 to 0.10 hectare, and per capita food output collapsed by 41% from 240 to 142 kg [42].

In Africa, women smallholder famers were one of powerful engines and would play key role in the development process to ensure food security at household level and they made greater contribution to household food security but women smallholders farmers households were the most neglected in the development policies and programs despite its contribution to food security at national levels.

The concept of coping strategies is not new. But, different researchers, scholars, authors and organizations have defined the term coping strategies in different ways. These indicate that there is no comprehensive definition [43]. Devereux defines as a response to adverse events or shocks. Broad definition of coping strategies, namely that “all the strategically selected acts that individuals and households in a poor socioeconomic position use to restrict their expense or earn some extra income to enable them to pay for the basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter) and not fall too far below their society’s level of welfare” [44]. Food insecurity is still widespread, especially among developing nations [45]. Over 960 million people in the world are hungry and undernourished [46]. The majority of these people are found in developing countries, most especially in Asia and Africa, and many die of hunger-related diseases (Standing Committee on Nutrition [47]). According to African Food Security Briefs [48], approximately one-third of the people in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished [45].

The strategies pursued by households differ in several aspects, that is, within the household and between households [49]. Due to varying degrees of wealth among households, different coping behaviors are adopted by households at different poverty levels. However, some coping strategies are common to all households although the extent to which such strategies enable a household to remain afloat depend on the assets at their disposal [43]. Above all, the general tendency is that the lower the household asset status, the more likely the household would engage in erosive responses such as selling off productive assets such as farm implements [50].

In view of the findings of the study and the above concluding remarks, the following recommendations are made in order to promote sustainable food security at smallholder farmer’s household level in the study district. Gender monitoring and evaluation of the ongoing programs should be carried out to ensure benefits to all and particularly to the vulnerable, female-headed households. Withdrawing children from school was also a common for food-insecure households copping strategy in the study districts. To reduce school withdrawal, the government in collaboration with the World Food Program served school children with feeding program.

In addition to this, implementing disaster and risks management programs to support rural poor and smallholder farmers during natural calamities and other shocks is desperately needed to give prescription for the households. Moreover, encouraging a wise use of natural resources as well as improved technologies, increasing animal and crop diversification and increasing local social net work systems among the community during shocks and stress would be important. Pay attention to policy and strategies of access to use water resources uses both surface water and ground water like modern irrigation technologies and unemployment issues is the big problem. So, households should be focusing on home gardens activities.