Vol. 9(12), pp. 341-354, December 2017 DOI: 10.5897/JDAE2017.0846 Article Number: 009821566628 ISSN 2006-9774 Copyright ©2017 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article http://www.academicjournals.org/JDAE Journal of Development and Agricultural Economics Review Why does food insecurity persist in Ethiopia? Trends, challenges and prospects of food security in Ethiopia Fikre Lemessa Ocho 1 , Gezahegn Berecha Yadessa 1 , Fikadu Mitiku Abdissa 2 and Adugna Eneyew Bekele 2 * 1 Department of Horticulture and Plant Sciences, Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, P. O. Box 307, Jimma, Ethiopia. 2 Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Jimma University College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, P. O. Box 307, Jimma, Ethiopia. Received 16 May, 2017; Accepted 10 July, 2017 This paper seeks an answer to why does food insecurity persists in Ethiopia with extensive review of literature? Nearly, one billion people globally are food insecure and food security challenges are widespread in the developing countries. Ethiopia has been renowned as a country of famine and food insecurity. During the period between 1958 and 1977 over 25 million people were affected, from 1974 to 1991, it was wracked by political instability, war, famine, and economic decline. Since1991, the country has shown commitment to achieve food security. As a result, there has been a reduction of food insecure people from 52 to 30% and the proportion of people living below the nationally defined poverty line from 44% in 2005 to 29.6% in 2011 although food insecurity remains a big challenge. The structural challenges that drive food insecurity are drought and low productivity due to limited use of agricultural technology. Macro-economic challenges like alarming food prices and unemployment determine the prospect of food security. Therefore, there is an urgent need to transform access to agricultural technology by farmers and employment opportunity. Finally, it was argued here that the government should invest on food to stabilize price and safeguard the poor. Key words: Drought, food aid, famine, food price, food security, malnutrition. INTRODUCTION Conceptual background In many documents, food security, hunger and malnutrition were used interchangeably, in spite of their very unique and different concepts. Conceptually, there are differences among the three concepts although they have close linkages. For instance, FAO reports on the state of food security present world hunger progress as an indicator of food insecurity (FAO, 2008). Since 1996 world food summit, food security was defined as “a situation when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their *Corresponding author. E-mail: adugna_e@yahoo.com. Author(s) agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License