How Cassava production could solve the food insecurity problems?

Despite the importance of Cassava as a staple food among root crop categories and potential contribution in combating hunger and poverty, the extension activity in the country and in the study area mainly focuses on grain and little attention was given to root crops. Also its contribution on food security is not assessed so far. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to assess the extent of cassava production and its contribution to the household food security in Ofa district of Ethiopia. Both primary and secondary data sources were used to address the objectives. Primary data were collected from 181 sample farmers drown from three cassava producer rural villages using multi-stage sampling technique. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used to summarize the data. Furthermore, inferential statistics such as paired sample T-test was employed to assess the contribution of cassava production for food security. The results revealed that calorie intake, frequency of meal, annual crop income, livestock ownership, oxen ownership, health care expenditure, education expenditure, family annual income and family saving amount in the study area were improved after involving cassava production. Further, the results indicated that sample households improved their calorie intake level from 1937.87 to 2241.62 per adult equivalent per day and annual income from Birr11, 568.65 to Birr16, 065.39. This indicated that cassava production has a significant and positive impact on income and food security status of sample households. The constraints of cassava producers in the study area are productivity, shortage of farm landholding, soil fertility and recurrent drought. Therefore, the researcher recommends that the government, non-government, cooperatives and agricultural research centers should support the cassava producer farmers by giving improved variety and promote the non-producer farmers to participate in cassava production and create market chain in the study area.