Determinants of Food Security Among Wage Workers in the Flori-horticulture Industry in Kenya: a Case Study of Northwest Mt. Kenya Region

Abstract

Understanding the determinants of household food security is critical in designing relevant and appropriate policy interventions aimed at improving the livelihoods of flori-horticulture wage workers in Kenya. The study set out to investigate the major determinants of food security among flori-horticulture wage workers within the Northwest Mount Kenya region, and whether their wage incomes were sufficient to cushion them from food insecurity. Additionally, this study needed to establish coping strategies for households that experienced food insecurity. Multi-stage sampling technique was employed where in the first stage, purposive sampling was used to sample 5 farms out of the total 35 farms in the region. In the second stage, simple random sampling was used to pick 24 wage workers per farm. This resulted into a sample size of 120 wage workers, who were later interviewed at household level. In order to model the problem of food security, the Logistic regression model was used to estimate the predictor variable coefficients, and marginal effects were further computed to interpret the regression results. The results indicated that nearly 71.2 per cent of households within the study area were food insecure. Education of the household head, ownership of livestock such as poultry, and income from wage work were found to be significant determinants of food security at 5% level of significance. However, household size and age of the household head were insignificant determinants. In terms of household coping strategies, the study found out that 16.1 per cent of households borrowed food in order to bridge food gaps, while 28.2 per cent reduced the quantity and quality of their food intakes while a majority, 56.4 per cent took food from local shops on credit.