Comparison of Food Security Situations of Rural Households in Heris and Bostanabad with Emphasis on Agricultural Indicators Using FGIS

Since food security is an indicator of health at the household and individual levels and food insecurity can be a predictor of developmental, health, and nutritional problems, it is necessary to determine its related factors in any society. It is one of the phenomena affecting all economic, social, and political dimensions. The concept of food security is very broad and is defined by the interaction of a range of biological, economic, social, agricultural, and physical factors. Understanding the food security situation of each region can make planning more efficient with more promising results. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the zone of food security in the rural areas of the two cities of Heris and Bostanabad. This was an applied research in terms of purpose and a descriptive-analytical research in terms of methodology. In this study, 22 agricultural indices derived from the results of the 2014 General Agricultural Census were used and the outputs were classified into very good, good, medium, poor, and very poor categories. The information was gained through Fuzzy Logic and Shanon Entropy methods. The research findings indicated that out of 293 rural areas studied, 8 (2.73%), 22 (7.51%), 50 (17.06%), 110 (37.54%), and 103 (35.15%) villages were in very good, good, moderate, poor, and very poor conditions, respectively. Overall, from the agricultural perspective, food security was in a dangerous situation in 72.70% of the villages in the study areas and required the officials’ special attention, especially in the area of sustainable development of agricultural sector.