Aim: This article examines the concept of food security at global and national levels, addressing challenges such as population growth, climate change, and socio-economic inequalities. It proposes solutions including sustainable agricultural development, strengthening food systems, and enhancing food accessibility.
Material & Method: This research, employing an applied and descriptive-analytical approach, examined rural households in Arasbaran through Krejcie-Morgan random sampling (n=272). Instrument validity was assessed with guidance from professors, and questionnaire reliability was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha. Data analysis was conducted using the LISREL structural equation modeling method.
Conclusion: This research, by examining four key indicators of food security (access, quality, sustainability, empowerment) in Arasbaran, identified critical challenges. The model demonstrated acceptable fit with RMSEA=0.049, and all variables were influential on food security. Ten significant challenges, including import dependency and lack of training, were identified, and the positive impact of the variables on each other was analyzed. Ten key challenges to the food security of rural households in the Arasbaran region, each of which directly or indirectly affects food security, were identified. These challenges include import dependency, limited access to healthy and hygienic foods, agricultural land-use change, inadequate agricultural development programs, lack of specialized training for farmers, severe food price fluctuations, insufficient use of modern technologies for product protection, problems in food processing, water resource scarcity, and the absence of modern agricultural technologies.
Innovation: This research, focusing on the Arasbaran region, has conducted an in-depth analysis of the infrastructural and institutional challenges to food security in rural areas, whereas many previous studies have primarily concentrated on economic and income-related factors. The utilization of Structural Equation Modeling (LISREL) to analyze the complex relationships among various food security variables represents an innovative approach in this field, enabling a more precise and comprehensive examination of the factors influencing food security.