Abstract

Women smallholder farmers (WSFs) play great roles in ensuring food security at household level as a poverty reduction strategy, but they are faced with a number of constraints that deprive them from fulfilling their potential as farmers, food producer, provider and entrepreneur. In evaluating the constraints on WSFs toward ensuring food security at household level as a poverty reduction strategy, this study focused on examining variables such as the women’s level of education, access to resources, technology, family size, as well as the agro-inputs. The results showed that 58% of respondents were food secured, while 42% of the respondents were food insecure. Also more than 60% of smallholder farmers in the study area are women, though their efforts and the mechanization of agriculture has marginalized them, and women are more considered as consumers than producers. Morever, WSFs have been less appreciated and continue to suffer from limited access to resources and opportunities especially in agriculture sector. A Logistic regression analysis showed that five out of eight variables analyzed were significant at the 5% level (p < 0.05), However, to ensure that research results are utilized and WSFs have access to new irrigation service technology, markets, education, capital, farms, as well as the agro inputs, the government and public and private development sector have to support and integrate short and long-term development initiatives and make sure that the initiatives are conceived and implemented with special consideration of women as smallholder farmers.

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