Abstract:
Food security is important to economic, social, religious, political and cultural development. The study assessed the effect of household characteristics on food security status among smallholder farming households in Uasin Gishu County. Descriptive survey was adopted for the study and data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Majority of respondents were male (56%), with an average age of 38 years and most of them (78%) married. One hundred and seventy-one (43%) respondents had secondary school as their highest level of education. In relation to gender of head of households, the majority were led by men, at 78%. A large proportion of the households (67%) had farm size below five acres with average farm size reported to be 2.29 acres. Majority, 91%, of the respondents owned the land with only 9% indicating that they leased land. Majority, 69% had more than six years farming experience. Majority of respondents sourced their food from own farm production at 96.9%. Majority (70%) of respondents had not experienced food insecurity.
There was insignificant (p-values>0.05) positive relationship between demographic characteristics and food shortage while gender variable shows inverse relationships. The odds of male headed household to experience food insecurity decreases by 1.9% compared to their female headed counterparts, (?=-0.019). The odds for the married head of household to experience food shortages is 0.39 compared to single, widowed, separated combined (?=0.390). The odds that those who are illiterate to be exposed to food insecurity is 0.121 as compared to those with some level of education (?=-0.121). Furthermore, the odds to experience food shortages for those with less than two acres of land is 0.233 as compared to those with greater than two acres, (?=0.233). In conclusion, demographic characteristics like gender, marital status, education level and size of farm influence the state of household food security. |
