Food security exists when everyone has physical and economic access to sufficient and nutritious food to meet their dietary need for active and healthy life. The focus of the study was to analyse how many small/marginal farmers, workers and female-headed households were food insecure. The study was conducted in district Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan during March 2012. A total of 80 rural households were selected randomly from the study area and interviewed directly. The results show that 81.50% female-headed households were food insecure followed by workers (75%) and small/marginal farmers (69%) respectively. About 87% workers were adversely affected by the recent inflation trend related to food commodities as compared to the female-headed household (74%) and small farmers (72%). Overall, about 77% respondents were affected by the drastic rise in prices of food commodities in recent years. Other important socio-economic variables of households were also analysed, such as age, education, debt burden, land holding, occupation of respondents and type of house.

The logistic regression model was used to analyse the factors affecting the food security situation of Faisalabad’s rural households. Results show that the number of family members, education of household head, amount of loan, medical expenditures and age of household head were the important factors affecting the household’s food security. The signs of all variables were according to a priori expectations¹. The results reveal that the level of education of household head and medical expenditures on family members were significantly affecting the food security. The number of family members, debt burden and age of household heads were negatively affecting the food security situation of households. The male-headed households were more food secure as compared to female-headed households.

Food security is likely to be affected by different policy variables included in the model for short, medium and long run. In order to address the said concerns effectively government should take measures to enhance the literacy rate in the rural areas; address population control; targeted introduce safety-net programmes for female-headed household; to break the vicious cycle, where inadequate food leads to poor health condition, which leads to low labour productivity and high incidence of illness, government needs to provide adequate medical facilities to the rural poor.