THE IMPACT OF SMALL SCALE IRRIGATION, MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICIES ON FOOD SECURITY, INCOME DIVERSIFICATION AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

ABSTRACT Small holders’ farmers in Ethiopia are characterized by food insecurity. The aim of the study is to examine the impact of small scale irrigation, fiscal and monetary policy on household food security, income diversification and sustainable agriculture. A total of 228 sample household head were selected systematically and interviewed using semi structured questionnaire to produce data relating to impact of small scale irrigation, monetary and fiscal policy on food security during the year 2016-2019GC;in order to evaluate the contribution of irrigation program to food security income diversification and sustainable agriculture the control group and experimental group were used; to evaluate food security the wealth index and price index were used; the expected effects were analyzed by descriptive and Logit model, in both cases irrigation program markedly shows improvement in food security when compared to rain fed program; moreover, to evaluate the contribution irrigation program to income diversification the anticipated effect was analyzed using descriptive and Logit model. In both descriptive and Logit cases irrigation program significantly shows progression in income diversification compared to rain fed program; however, to evaluate the contribution of monetary and fiscal policy to food security the theoretical case, price and wealth index were used; the estimated effects were analyzed by descriptive, Logit and qualitative analysis. In descriptive and Logit cases the monetary and fiscal program markedly showed deterioration in food security and the qualitative finding also confirmed this; the various factors (physical, technological, methodological and social factors) also revealed different interpretations on sustainable agriculture within the users and none users. Hence, both national and local governments willing to scale up small scale irrigation, agricultural input technologies, methodologies to progress income diversification and sustainable agriculture were recommendable. Moreover, this study results imply that monetary and fiscal policy makers willing to control excessive foreign exchange rate to improve food insecurity through enhancing the domestic capacity of tax collection and improve financial resources management and should give due attention for internal political stability.