Borthakur, N.Hazarika, Upama2020-06-162020-06-162019-07http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810147653India is an agricultural country and agriculture plays an important role in the economic life of India. Food and nutritional security continues to be the strong foundation of India’s food policy despite its tremendous achievement on food production. Household food security is an important measure of wellbeing. Despite the increasing global concern of improving food security, the nature and extent of food security at the household level in rural areas is not well documented. The present study has been undertaken to examine the present level of food and nutritional security status of rural households in Assam State. An attempt has been made to examine the status of temporal agricultural food production and variability across the state of Assam. An analysis to the various factors that affect existing food security of the sample farmers and their coping strategies during food shortages were done. Finally, an alternative plan for attaining food security of sample households was given. For evaluating the specific objectives of the study, both primary and secondary data were collected.Appropriate analytical and statistical procedure was followed for each objectives such as compound growth analysis and coefficient of variation of area, production, yields of major food crops in Assam, regression analysis, linear programming, percentage and ranking method etc. for the period of 1998-99 to 2014-15.A multi stage random sampling design was used for the present study. Altogether, 240 sample households were taken from Upper Brahmaputra Valley Zone and Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone of Assam zones. The results of the study revealed that positive and highly significant growth in production (2.37 %) in food grains which was mainly due to highly significant growth rate of yield (2.72 %). But negative growth rate was also observed in case of area of food grains (0.34 %) during the study period of 1998-99 to 2014-15. Semi-log quadratic equation estimated for food grains production, area and yield revealed significant acceleration during the period in the state of Assam.An analysis of instability measured by coefficient of variation of production of total food grains revealed that in the entire period it was 17.35 per cent with major contribution of yield variability which was 16.57 per cent. Again, the analysis of per capita availability of different food grains revealed that the per capita availability of cereals remained more than normative requirement during all the periods. Per capita availability of pulses, though remained more than normative requirement, it was in a declining trend up to 2008-13 and increased during 2013-15 but per capita availability of total food grains was more than normative requirement during all the periods. It was found that the per capita availability of oilseeds produced in the state was far below the normative requirement, although its area, production as well as productivity increased over the years. It was found that in Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone, 30 per cent of sample households were food secure while 70 per cent households were food in secure.Moreover, the food secure percentages of marginal, small, semi medium and medium farmers of Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone were 22.22 per cent, 17.07 per cent, 33.33 per cent and 76.92 per cent, respectively. In Upper Brahmaputra Valley Zone, 36.67 per cent of sample households were food secure while 63.33 per cent of households were food insecure. The food secure percentages of marginal, small, semi medium and medium farmers of Upper Brahmaputra Valley Zone were 7.50 per cent, 28.57 per cent, 66.67 per cent and 72.22 per cent, respectively.It indicated that the farm size could be a significant factor to the food security status of farming households. Different socioeconomic, personnel and natural factors were analyzed in order to study the factors affecting food security of sample households. The regression analysis revealed there were important factors such as total land (ha), farm size, rice area (ha), monthly income, age of household head, education of household head, household member, age of wife, education of wife and access to finance that affected food security status of sample households. The findings revealed that the most important way of obtaining food when stocks run out was to purchase food on credit from the market followed by selling productive assets like land or livestock during the food shortages. Other options like reduce quantity, consume seed stock held for next season, take money from money lenders etc. were also adopted by rural households during shortage period. A linear programming was used to assist managers in decision making and resource allocation among the food insecure households of Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone and Upper Brahmaputra Valley Zone. The optimal farm plan for food insecure households indicated the scope for reorganizing the resources in order to increase the net farm returns to the extent of 24.70 per cent of marginal farms, 40.57 per cent of small farms 62.01 per cent of semi-medium farms and 73.16 per cent of medium farms of Lower Brahmaputra Valley Zone which were shown through optimum plan. In the same way, in Upper Brahmaputra Valley Zone, there was scope for reorganizing the resources which would result in increasing the net farm returns to the extent of 24.02 per cent of marginal farms, 37.20 per cent of small farms 73.41 per cent of semi-medium farms and 85.90 per cent of medium farms under the limited capital situations. The results showed that majority of the food insecure farming households would improve the food security status from the production of crop enterprises based on an efficient allocation of resources as recommended by the optimal farm plan. Therefore, it could be concluded that appropriate policy measures should be taken up to facilitate equitable growth of all major food crops in the state. Again, policy effective community participation in the design of concepts and messages aimed at imparting knowledge about family measures directed towards the provision of better family planning, increased awareness and access to family planning facilities should be given adequate attention and priority by the government.ennullThesis