Agricultural production and food insecurity in Ethiopia: System dynamics approch

Abstract

Agriculture has been the main economic activity of many Ethiopians for centuries, and it has employed around 80 % of the population. Despite the involvement of a large proportion of population in the food production, food insecurity has been the main problem in which a large proportion of the population is undernourished or acquires food consumption below the minimum requirement. Identifying the causes of the problem has been vague as it involves complex characteristics such as; time delay, non-linearity, feedback etc. which affects our understanding of the main structure. Previous research has pointed out the causes of the food insecurity as; insufficient agricultural production, imperfect market, rapid population growth etc. However, the analysis of most of the research undertaken has not been integrated to include all of the factors in the study and able to provide comprehensive analysis of the problem. Moreover, the analysis has not address access of food at household and per-capita level. In this thesis, system dynamic model is used to identify the underlying problematic structure by modeling the population, land use & land fertility, and market sectors. The simulation results have replicated well the historical data and show that both availability and accessibility of food have been the main constrained to food consumption. Moreover, the change in land productivity associated with land degradation, and the degradation effect to food insecurity has been insignificant in the analysis covered by this. We have examined the effect of future policy options, such as improving land management and the application of improved technologies, in improving the food security.