The study presented food security situation among farming male and female headed households in Eden
District Municipality of the Western Cape, South Africa was conducted in 2010. The study was conducted
among 31 male and 19 female headed farming household heads, selected proportionate to the size
of each group. The household heads were selected via simple random sampling procedure. Data for the
study were elicited from the respondents using structured questionnaire. The analytical tools used include
the Mann-Whitney test to determine if a difference in food security exists among the two groups, a
Wilcoxon test was used as an alternative for indicating the differences in food security. Frequency tables
indicated the percentage distribution of respondents based on demographic characteristics. Out of the 12
food security constraints identified, both males and females viewed poor storage, poor market, and lack of
credit and land tenure as the constraints that highly affect their household food security. The result
showed that 58 percent of the females were between 41-50 years and 42 percent of the males were above
fifty years of age. The percentage of male headed households that studied up to college level (16.1) was
slightly higher than those of females (15.8). Most of the household heads had between 2 to four years
farming experience (77.4 males and 64.4 females respectively). with 90.3 males farming on 3 to 4 hectors
and females on 78.9 hector. Most of the farn1ers do not have any co-operative or farmer society. A significant
difference existed in their food security status (Z =2.115, p 0.34), with higher mean rank for
males (28.44) than for females (20.71). This confirms that food insecurity incidence was higher in female
headed households than male headed households. / Thesis (M.Sc.(Agric Extension) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2011
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/14790 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Modirwa, Sinah |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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