Determinants of Food Security Status of Smallholder Farming Households in the Wa West and Sissala West Disricts of the Upper West Region Of Ghana

Abstract

Smallholder farmers play a vital role in food production in Ghana. However, their households are major casualties of food insecurity despite their efforts in food production. This study sought to identify the determinants of food security status and describe the coping strategies used among smallholder farming households in the Upper West Region of Ghana. The study calculated a food security index (FSI) to determine the food security status of households in the study area. The logit model was used to determine the factors that influence household food security while the Kendall’s coefficient of concordance was used to test the significance level of identified and ranked coping strategies used by households in the study area. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the respondents that were interviewed. In all, data was collected on 200 smallholder farm households for the analysis. The mean farmland size was approximately 2 hectares whereas the major months of inadequate household food provisioning were April to July. The results of the study revealed that about 60% of households in the study area did not obtain the expected FSI score of one (1) and therefore categorized as food insecure. The Binary Logit estimation revealed that gender, age, educational status, quantity of own food produced and access to credit had a positive relationship with household food security status. Out of the eleven ranked strategies, reducing the number of daily meals, sale of farm and household assets, shift to less preferred foods and consuming low quality and cheaper foods, were the major strategies adopted by households in the study area to cope with food insecurity. The study recommends that the Government of Ghana should strengthen agricultural administration at the district level through the provision of adequate logistics and human resources. Rural education deserves to be taken seriously and given the needed attention. Priority should be given to the provision of credit facilities to the smallholder farming households to serve as capital to explore alternative long term sustainable income generating activities to improve household food security.