FOOD INSECURITY FACED BY THE RURAL PEOPLE

Abstract

The main objectives of this study were to determine the level of food insecurity condition exists in the study area that was faced by the rural people and to explore the relationship between food insecurity of the respondents and their selected characteristics. Besides these, attempt was also made to ascertain the problems faced by the rural people in achieving household food security. The study was conducted with randomly selected 120 rural household farm families of three villages namely, Dumuria, Lohipur and Dayapur of Chowara union under the South Sadar upazila of Comilla district. Family head of each of the farm families was treated as the respondent. Data were collected through personal interview by using an interview schedule during the period of 02 August to 15 September, 2011. Pearson’s product moment correlation co-efficient (r) was computed to examine the relationship between the variables. Food insecurity faced by the rural people was the dependent variable and ten selected characteristics of the respondents constituted the independent variables of this study. The highest proportion (66.67%) of the rural farmers in this study area were found in food secure condition followed by low food insecure condition (20%), medium food insecure condition (13.33%) while none was faced high food insecure condition. Education, farm size, annual family income and daily time allocation in farm work of the respondents showed negative relationship with their household food insecurity, whereas family size and daily dietary needs of the family showed positive relationship with their food insecurity. The major problems faced by the rural people in achieving household food security were inadequate land for farming, lack of money or capital or necessary fund, inadequate training facilities, lack of knowledge on different aspects of improved farming enterprises and insufficient credit facilities