Abstract:
Food security is an important concern of developing countries which is mostly profound in the rural areas. To achieve the food security, it is vital to explore its determinants not only empirically but also review studies are important to be undertaken to highlight the gaps left in the empirical research. Seeking to this, the present systematic review study was accomplished to assess the determinants of food security in the rural households of the developing countries. For this, 26 peer-reviewed studies conducted during 2005-2017 in the developing countries were selected after the adoption of inclusion and exclusion criterion. Content analysis was used as the analytical technique for the identification of food security determinants in the selected published literature. It was found that the three themes or components of food security i.e. availability of food, accessibility of food, and utilization of food has been covered in the literature. The most studied determinants of food availability were education, household head age, farm size, inputs availability and use, livestock holdings, and credit availability. In the case of food accessibility, the most studied determinants were household size and income level of households. For food utilization, sex was the most studied determinant. Overall, five factors like education, household size, income level of household, household head age, and farm size were the most studied determinants of food security. The least studied determinants included household labor, engagement in non-farm activities, and engagement in off-farm activities, foreign remittances, extension contact, farming experience, and distance to market. Thus, the most studied component of food security was food availability followed by food accessibility, while utilization of food was the least studied component. Therefore, the study recommends that not only such studies should be replicated but also the future research on the subject matter should focus on the least studied component of food security i.e. utilization of food.
Page(s):
20-20
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Abstract Book on International Conference on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security, August 27-31, 2023 , Volume: 0, Issue: 0, Year: 2023