Coping strategies to food insecurity and adaptation mechanisms to meteorological drought in the drought-prone rural areas of Tigray

Food insecurity is a persistent problem in the drought-prone rural areas of Tigray, Ethiopia. Besides, there is limited knowledge of how food-insecure rural households deal with food insecurity and the associated meteorological droughts. This study investigates the coping strategies to food insecurity and adaptation mechanisms to meteorological drought in the drought-prone rural areas of Tigray. A total of 363 households were studied using a questionnaire and focus group discussion. Findings revealed that 74.4, 74.1, and 73.8 percent of the households were frequently limiting the household’s meal size, depending on aid, and consuming less quality cheap food, respectively; about 70 percent of the food-insecure rural households relied on the most severe coping strategies. The average Coping Strategy Index was 148.5, implying severe food insecurity. On the other hand, 27.2 and 22.8 percent of the studied households have been adopting livestock production and cultivating shorter-duration crops, respectively, to deal with the meteorological droughts. However, 77.1 and 69.5 percent of the households have never adopted preparing alternative wetting and harvesting rainwater, respectively. Paired Comparative Analysis results show that livestock production, cultivating drought-tolerant crops, and cultivating shorter-duration crops were the first three prioritized adaptation strategies to meteorological drought by the households. Most of the food-insecure households were using severe coping strategies, and the mostly applied adaptation strategies were barely recommended to deal with the varying and shorter precipitations. Therefore, households’ coping and adaptive capacities ought to be appropriately enhanced to deal with the challenges in which all the concerned bodies and stakeholders should act.