Determinants of livelihood diversification and its contribution to food security of rural households in Gozamin Woreda, Ethiopia

This study was conducted to assess the determinants of rural households' livelihood diversification and its contribution to household food security status in Gozamin Woreda, Amhara region, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional research design and mixed research approach were used. Primary data were collected with the aid of household surveys, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. A multi-stage stratified random sampling method was used to select 218 households. The Simpson diversity index result showed that 22.94%, 11.93%, 44.5%, and 20.64% of the households were no, low, average, and high livelihood diversifiers. The food consumption score result indicated that 41.28%, 10.09%, and 48.62% of households were found in poor, borderline, and acceptable food security status respectively. In addition, the ordered logistic regression model revealed that education level, agroecology, memberships of cooperative, access to training, access to transport, access to credit, agricultural risk, and total annual income positively affect while sex negatively affect the status of livelihood diversifications. The ordered logistic regression analysis also revealed that the status of livelihood diversification with has a positive and highly significant effect on the status of food security. The study concluded that when the status of households' livelihood diversification increased, the status of food security also highly increased in the study area. Therefore, to improve the status of food security, extension workers, local governmental and non-governmental organization and policymakers should give higher attention to increasing the status of livelihood diversification of rural households. Finally, policy implications were made according to the finding of the study.