Impacts of efficiency on food security status of smallholders in the Gurage Zone of Ethiopia

The lower productivity in the agricultural sector has been one of the main contributors to the Ethiopia’s food insecurity. Despite less than expected outcomes, the government is nevertheless placing a high priority on ensuring food security through large investments in farm technologies. Increasing agricultural productivity can be achieved through the use of new technology and/or through the improvement of internal efficiency. In this study the impacts of efficiencies on food security status of smallholders were analyzed in the Gurage zone of Ethiopia. A general propensity score and dose response function were used to analyze the data collected from 384 randomly selected smallholders. The results depicted that while all types of farm efficiency have a favorable effect on the food accessibility and availability, technical efficiency is most important for boosting the availability of household calories for smallholder farm households. Therefore, measures that improve smallholders’ knowledge and skill, access to land, provision of farmer training centers, accessibility of credit, and availability of agricultural inputs would significantly boost their efficiency in turn the food security status.