Household Food Security through Cooperatives in Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

The government of Ethiopia has technically and financially encouraged cooperative societies in order to play significant role in ensuring food security. This study thus investigated the impact of cooperative societies on ensuring household food security in Tigray region using 400 sample households, household survey and Heckman two-stage model. The study confirms that cooperatives have contributed substantial roles in ensuring food security in the study area through increasing income sources, creating employment, and supplying inputs and consumer goods at reasonable price. The adult-equivalent income and expenditure of cooperative members are statistically different from the nonmembers during 2009 and 2010 (P<0.05). The inter-time comparison method indicates that there are statistically significant difference in per adult- expenditure and -income of the members before and after joining the cooperatives (P<0.05). The study found that 21% of the members are food insecure while the figure for the nonmembers is 36% (significance difference at P<0.01). Cooperative society is among the major determinant of household food security in the study areas (P<0.05). This justifies that expansion of cooperative societies is an important tool to minimize the food insecurity problem in the country. The study is also vital for policy makers, students and researchers to draw lessons on how cooperative societies reduce food security. Thus, the government should give attention for the expansion and diversification of cooperatives in order to join more people and then achieve food security.