Measurement of Food Security and Investigation of its Challenges in Rural Areas (Case Study: Badr District from Ravansar County)

Rural societies, which are meeting more than two-third of food supplies, play an important role in providing food security in Iran. But, there are evidences which indicate that the situation of food security is unsuitable in comparison with urban areas. This situation result from some reasons that have not been considered yet. Therefore, this research is aimed at measuring food security and delineating its future challenges in Iran rural areas. To do this, household House Holder in 24 rural settlements were selected in Badr District as a case study. In quantitative section, for measurement of food security, a standard an international questionnaire from United States agricultural ministry were used, which its validity and reliability had been confirmed in several studies. In this phase, 175 of household House Holder were estimated as statistical sample and their point of views were examined. In qualitative part, data, which were collected from interview with key and knowledgeable, were continued until reaching to theory saturation by using purposeful sampling and snowball method and collected data were analyzed using Ground Theory Method. The results of quantitative section showed that food security is in an unsuitable situation, around 6.3% of persons placed in food security situation, 9.7% of persons in food insecurity without hunger, 25.1% of persons in food insecurity with moderate hunger and 58.9% of persons in in food insecurity with severe hunger. So, based on these results, there isn’t any significant relationship among studied rural areas in terms of food security. The results of qualitative section in relation to food security challenges also showed that there are five main challenges about food security in study area, which have a continuum relationship with each other. These challenges are: weak of policy making, weak of economic situation, continuum, environmental hazards, cultural obstacles, social changes and agricultural unsustainability.