Spatial variations of household food insecurity in East Gojjam Zone, Amhara Region, Ethiopia: implications for agroecosystem-based interventions

Background In Ethiopia, food insecurity remains a major public health challenge. Agroecosystem has a potential to determine food insecurity. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the spatial pattern of household food insecurity across different agroecosystems in East Gojjam Zone. An agroecosystem-linked cross-sectional survey was done among 3108 households after selecting using multistage cluster sampling. The study area is divided into hilly and mountainous highlands, midland plains with black soil, midland plains with brown soil, midland plains with red soil and lowlands of Abay valley. Data were collected on sociodemographic variables, household food access and geographical location after five days training and pretesting of the tool to maintain data quality. Data were entered using Epi Info version 3.5 and exported to SaTScan and SPSS 20 for further analysis. To identify the most likely clusters using SaTScan software, the log likelihood ratio (LLR) and P less than 0.05 were considered as the level of significance.