Determinants and Impacts of Livelihood Choice Strategies on Farm Households’ Food Security Status in North Shewa Zone Oromia, Ethiopia

Livelihoods diversification strategies are one means of meeting the overgrowing world population’s food demand. This study identified household-level determinants of livelihood diversification strategies and its impact on food security status in North Shewa, Oromia, Ethiopia. Both primary and secondary data about the 2021/22 production year were collected for this study. Primary data was collected from 400 smallholder farmers that were collected using a simple random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics and econometric models were used for data analysis. Looking into the estimated coefficients, the results indicate that livelihood strategy is significantly influenced by fourteen explanatory variables. Agro ecology, sex, family size, farm size, economic active member, training, credit access, livestock holding, education level, experience in farming, irrigation experience, media, distance from the market were significant variables that affect the household livelihood strategy status. Impact evaluation estimated result indicated that participation of farming with non-farming livelihood diversification strategies increases farm household food security status by 25% while, participation in farming with off farming and farming with both non-farming and off farming livelihood diversification strategies increases households' food security status by 43 and 37% respectively over non-diversified households at a 1% probability level. This study indicated that there is room to improve rural households’ level of food security status using more of the aforementioned socio-economic variables. Therefore, policymakers should give due emphasis to the identified variables and improve the livelihoods of rural households.