Food insecurity and its determinants in rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

This paper empirically examines the determinants of households' food security in District Dir (Lower) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Primary data were gathered through a pre-structured questionnaire. The screening questions approach was adopted to solicit the information from a total of 200 households. The binary logistic regression was used for data analysis. Our results show that farm households with an employed head, and having improved access to farm and non-farm income, are more likely to be food secure. While larger sized farm households located away from the main stream markets, are more likely to be food insecure. We conclude that households' access to a secure source of income and markets have a significant influence to ameliorate the food security in rural areas. The policy is informed to improve households' access to farm and non-farm income vis-a-vis accessibility to the main stream markets. We recommend that interventions are needed to enhance off-farm employment opportunities, make the agriculture technology more accessible to farmers, and develop the physical infrastructure in rural areas. The findings of the study have significant policy implications in the context of food security in other developing countries.