During 2008, many sub-saharan african economies have been obliged to suspended their
imports tariffs to the magnitude of the food crisis. Frequent riots experienced in several
cities have then raised the deep issue of food security. The purpose of this paper is to
identify for the case of Senegal the major causes of food insecurity among rural households
which are more affected, in particular farmers. A binomial logit model based on the
Senegalese household data (Esam I) is used to identify the most influential probable causes
of food insecurity among landowners.
The results showed that the probability of food insecurity among landowners is at its
highest for large size farmers operating in the Groundnut Belt and at its lowest for small
farmers whose activities are located in agro-ecological river areas. Income and
consumption diversification factors like income from livestock and net transfers seem to
hardly reduce the probability of food insecurity. The risk is also significantly diminished
for landowners who have access to agricultural and pastoral goods for self-sufficient needs.
Household size plays a key role in the issue at hand for all landowners.
Policymakers must then set some mechanism which will sustain farmers so that they can
receive their part of overall increasing economic growth benefits. In particular, by trying to
understand their specific agro-ecological conditions, they can for them identify which of
the key programs to address. More generally, creating programs and making policies that
are flexible and reflect the needs, conditions, and resources in each rural area is quite a
challenge for policy makers.