Reviewing the deployment of multiple indicators at micro-level food in/security investigations in Eastern Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Abstract Food security has remained on the common and alive agenda of scholars and actors globally. Particularly, in developing countries with a large number and rapid growth of populations, attaining food security is found to be a challenging duty. Overall, this work has aimed to provide information on the deployment of multiple food security indicators and food insecurity drivers in the investigations conducted on food in/security statuses at a micro-level in Ethiopia. A systematic literature review was conducted where a total of 132 pieces of literature were reviewed. An attempt was exerted to look into food in/security-related approaches and the commonly discoursed pillars. Apart from this, the empirical findings of academics on the issues targeted were perused wherein the inclusion of regularly conversed food security pillars was checked through respective indicators of food in/security at household or community levels regardless of the agroecological and settlement disparities. The review findings disclosed that the majority of the existing studies deployed either single or combined indicators of food in/security using households/communities as a unit of analysis where the major food security pillars were not fully addressed. This condition does not show all pillars of food security to be attained despite the objective-driven investigations of various contributors. Hence, the review findings call for the deployment of multiple food security indicators which potentially would reveal the major food security dimensions at a household and/or community level since a single non-holistic indicator is deemed not to capture the basic food security dimensions and insights regularly acknowledged.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Food security is a crucial scenario demanding determined actions to be ascertained for the well being and survival of human kind.This review article articulates the imperative deployment of multiple indicators in food in/security studies.This is due to the fact that food security is a multidimensional and complex scenario that demands deploying manifold indicators to be used in a single study.Believably, it is sought of as a single indicator is deemed for a particular dimension of food security and has its own weak sides that might be covered by other measures.Besides, basic and commonly discoursed food security pillars remain unaddressed through single-indicator-based studies.Hence, this review advocates the deployment of at least two or more food in/security indicators at a time to examine the complexity and basic pillars of food security.Therefore, this contribution will hopefully be of interest of a wider readership.
studies deployed either single or combined indicators of food in/security using households/communities as a unit of analysis where the major food security pillars were not fully addressed.This condition does not show all pillars of food security to be attained despite the objective-driven investigations of various contributors.Hence, the review findings call for the deployment of multiple food security indicators which potentially would reveal the major food security dimensions at a household and/or community level since a single non-holistic indicator is deemed not to capture the basic food security dimensions and insights regularly acknowledged.

Introduction
Food security has crucially been a multidimensional and thought-provoking theme indicating the development level of all nations across the globe (Akbari et al., 2022;Nabuuma et al., 2022;Pangaribowo et al., 2013).It is also advocated as a commonly globalized agenda and multisectoral concept entailing varied expressions across several academic disciplines (Andualem et al., 2021;Jones et al., 2013).With its assured connotation, food security, a rudimentary requirement for survival, is boldly avowed as a developmental keystone and an incessantly existing discipline since its evolution (Alnafissa, 2017;Dagnaygebaw, 2019;Simon, 2012).It is an elastic concept clearly outlined among the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) to be attained by the year 2030 duly addressing the target of zeroing hunger (Clay, 2002;Marchetti & Secondi, 2022).Predominantly in the developing world, assuring food security has become a common concern where agriculture is of paramount importance for people's food availability (Pawlak & Kołodziejczak, 2020).In this regard, the food insecurity crises have received the attention of scholars and policymakers worldwide to better reduce vulnerabilities to food shortfalls in planned ways (Ibok et al., 2019).
The international development works of the 1960s and 1970s were highly tied to the first appearance of the food security notion.These works have manifested that the food security concept is to be conceived as the capability to achieve cumulative dietary requirements in a reliable mode (von Braun et al., 1992as cited in Anderson & Cook, 1999).Later on, World Bank (1986) conceptualized food security conventionally as the "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life".Referring to the period of the 1970s, FAO (2005) points out the attainment of food availability and cost stability both at the national and universal scales as a chief goal of the global food crisis discussions.Since the 1980s, there has been a shift from the globalized and national levels of food security to household-level focuses with micro-level connotations of the concept (FAO, 2002 as cited in Van der Veen & Tagel, 2011).Accordingly, at a household level, the food security concept is defined as the obtainability of food through purchase and own production in developing areas to achieve welfare (Bedeke, 2012;Hoddinott & Yohannes, 2002).
Food security, characterized by its interdisciplinary nature, is among the common contentions of governments, academicians, and other concerned actors in the globalized context.Unquestionably, this is due to the fact that food is acknowledged as the furthermost rudimentary human metabolic prerequisite for existence, healthiness, and sustainable production.Across the world, food insecurity has been delineated to be an incessant restraint where the population grows with further requirements (Melak, 2015).Especially in developing countries with a rapidly growing population and impermanent climates, food shortfalls have become vital fetters for the people.In this regard, reports indicate that minimizing insecure conditions in food has been deservedly outlined as a key policy constraint in the publicity.In ruralized areas with undiversified livelihoods, relieving food insecurity was found to be too challenging for households with limited scientific investigations which reveal such a linkage (Bekele et al., 2019;Chirotaw et al., 2022;Dutta & Saikia, 2018;Smith et al., 2006).Worldwide, it was proven that tackling food insecurity, which is majorly driven by conflicts, extreme climatic conditions, and economic tremors, combined with mounting disparities, has been one of the people's challenging scenarios (Cordero-Ahiman et al., 2020;FAO., IFAD., UNICEF., WFP., & WHO, 2022).
As part of the developing economies, the vast majority of African countries are best remembered for the challenging features of food security expectations (Mbukwa, 2013).In Sub-Saharan Africa, food insecurity has been widely iterated by scholars under the auspices of concerned bodies such as the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).In eastern Africa, the occurrence of food insecurity driven by the varying and changing climates is recently reported to be much more severe in comparison with other areas of the world.Countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania are presently leading the rank in regard (Girma & Rahut, 2021).Additionally, it is described as a region where many countries suffer from aridity and recurring droughts frequently, wherein millions were forced to be assisted by pressing food aid (FAO., ECA., & AUC, 2021).A recent update on food and nutrition security in the region shows that food shortfalls are worsening rapidly, where nearly 82 million people have faced food insecurity at a higher acute rate driven by both natural and anthropogenic factors (World Food Program, 2022).
Ethiopia, particularly, is one of the harshly food-insecure, drought-vulnerable, and famine-prone countries in the region where smallholder farming has been dominantly serving as a key sustenance activity for human beings (2022; Smith et al., 2006;Anderson & Elisabeth, 2015;Gollin, 2014as cited in Aregash & Zerihun, 2022).Furthermore, Ethiopia in eastern Africa is one of the current focus areas of globalized attention due to both natural and human-driven circumstances.Adverse climatic conditions along with the resultants received the attention of stakeholders where agriculture, the mainstay and a leading economic generator of people's livelihoods, is adversely hamstrung (Abegaz, 2017).Food insecurity with an acute phase is the recent scenario in the region per the revealing reports where "a very high humanitarian assistance needs are likely to persist in 2022".Worsening prices of fuel and grains of food have been yielding the mounting crisis among which the food security of households is seriously challenged.Poor rainfall amounts since late 2021 which jeopardized crop production and loss of animals are the strongest manifestations of such situations (Famine Early Warning Systems Network/FEWSN, 2022).
On the other side, a recent report confirms this condition in which the food insecurity and malnourishment states in Ethiopia are presently measured and classed under serious chronicity (Global Hunger Index, 2022) revealing the country's rank to be 90 th out of 116.These conditions still affirm the fact that Ethiopia has been the principal beneficiary of food assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa in the decades elapsed (Melak, 2015) where the social and health conditions of the people have been seriously pressed by food insecurity (Amare et al., 2020).Other scholars also claimed that food insecurity along with poverty has still persisted as a crucial restraint in Ethiopia despite certain betterments in the recent past (Daniel & Gerber, 2017).The food security conditions in the country have been widely examined by contributors wherein diverse indicators revealing the household-level statuses are deployed.The commonly debated food security dimensions, namely, availability, access, utilization, and stability are expected to be attained in the existing studies using the recommended indicators.Such pillars of food security at the household level are boldly and expectedly met when multiple measures are demandingly deployed in food in/security studies.This is because a single indicator does not divulge all the major food security dimensions as it is non-holistic obscuring a detailed comprehension of food security due to its complexity (Coates & Maxwell, 2012;Vaitla et al., 2015).
Besides, reviewing the indicators of food security is the currently recommended way forward in the literature in consideration of food security's further dimension indicative conditions (Akbari et al., 2022).Among others, this circumstance initiated the author to carry out this review.The review was found to be significant because it calls for the inclusion of multiple food security indicators in food security investigations by actors and academicians.It is due to the fact that the majority of the contributed works are observed with the econometric and inferential models, as well as with a single or no indicator of food in/security situations in various parts of the country which could not capture the food security and vulnerability instances (Gebrerufael, 2019).Besides, this condition was found to be questionable in line with the fact that there is no single indicator for the complex, multidimensional, and dynamic nature of food security which demands the deployment of multiple indicators together.Other academics assert that the deployment of various measures is reasonable since understanding food security thoroughly depends on such diversified use of measures among others (Vaitla et al., 2015).On the other side, scholars avow that there is "no single indicator" where diverse food security criteria are met despite the diversified development of the indicators deployed through time (Coates & Maxwell, 2012).

Objective of the review
The main objective of this article was to provide necessary information on the deployment of multiple food in/security indicators and drivers of food insecurity in the investigations conducted at a micro level across Ethiopia through a systematic literature review.It was also intended to check the attainment and/or inclusion of major food security pillars in the existing food in/security studies where households and/or communities were used as a basic element of the analytical duties.

Databases, searching keywords, and screening procedure
In order to attain the intended objective of this review work, an exhaustive perusal of the existing food in/security peer-reviewed studies and the related theories was carried out.Relevant databases, considered as data sources, such as ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and the UN organizations like FAO, WHO, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and FEWSN, pertinent contributions (original research and review articles, thematically relevant master's and doctoral study reports) were accessed.Household and/or community level food in/security status, indicators, dimensions, Ethiopia, measures, and other related keywords which could lead to the required concerns were used while browsing.The downloaded materials were more of with the Ethiopian context, and some others are of continent-wise and globalized scenarios published in the English language.Especially for checking the deployment of multiple food in/security indicators in the existing studies, Ethiopia-focused peer-reviewed publications in the English language were screened out and duly perused where the use of a single indicator, no indicator with either the econometric/inferential model, and two and more (multiple) indicators in the studies deployed per the study intentions were differentiated.
As basic food security-related approaches/models are embraced in the review, it was found demanding to scrutinize such concerns since their evolvement for better clarity.Hence, the cited sources in terms of the timespan are bounded between 1981 and 2022 for the general introduction, concepts, theoretical underpinnings, and food security pillar investigations.Specifically, in the context of the study, the identified food insecurity drivers were found in the temporal coverage of 2000 to the present.Concerning the key issues of the review, namely, the deployment of multiple food security indicators, duly stressing sources that reveal the situations across the country in the last 15 years (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022) prioritizing their relevance for inclusion.
More focus was given to studies conducted at a household and/or community level looking into publications that deployed indicators (single, multiple, or no) and attempted to include the main food security pillars in the Ethiopian context.Diverse contributions of empirical studies were reread with a due focus on food in/security indicators and pillars in light of the food security concept claimed to be intricate and challenging to measure (BC Centre for Disease Control, 2019).Accordingly, an attempt was exerted to address the existing relevant and recent publications contributed in different parts of Ethiopia.The review was basically done in a national scenario to check the deployment of multiple indicators in food in/security investigations across all areas of the country.An in-depth observation of the weights given by the studies to the four equally valuable analytical tools of food security, namely, availability, access, utilization, and stability (Simon, 2012) was the other concern of this review.Besides, commonly debated approaches in the light of food in/security assessment were revisited to strengthen the review.
In this review, the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was employed.The SLR is a way of producing scientific indication to reply a specific study query in a transparent way that is reproducible looking for embracing the published evidence on the theme and reviewing the quality of the evidence scrutinized.In line with this, various selection parameters/criteria were put into consideration while selecting the articles for review in which inclusions and exclusions were outlined.Therefore, the geographic and conceptual scope of the studies, relevance to review title, the language of the studies published, and indicator deployments (a single or multiple) or no deployments were the main criteria to select the accessible literature wherein exclusions and the final inclusions were governed.These criteria can be considered as boundaries within the searching duties used to avoid data bias in addition to the set searching criteria and issue specificity.Consequently, a total of 132 studies or related literature were included in this review article among the entire 282 downloaded literature openly published in the Ethiopian setup and relevantly found to be a good fit to the review topic.The tabulated presentation (Table 1) is mainly weighted for checking the deployment of multiple indicators in food insecurity studies across the country based on the deployed database-based sources openly accessible.In line with systematic reviews, data bias is considerably outlined by addressing a specific question.Accordingly, with a due focus on a particular question that stems on the theme of the review topic, namely, the imperative deployment of multiple indicators in food in/security studies is a clearer way how data bias was managed while browsing and carefully reading the accessed materials based on the search keywords.The methodology part is schematically summarized into five procedures for the entire review as follows (Figure 1).

Concepts and theoretical debates in food in/security assessments
It is indicated that the first work to be published on food security dates back to the year 1974 (Akbari et al., 2022).This could happen amid the evolutionary phase of food security from the early 1930s to its golden years of 1990-2005 (Simon, 2012).Through time, numerous definitions by different bodies were contributed to food security, "an elusive concept", wherein continuous changes have been considered (Barrett & Lentz, 2009;Calleja et al., 2017;Timmer, 2004).For a multidimensional thought of food security, there has been no consent among the intellectuals concerning its standard meaning and system of measurement (Gebrerufael, 2019).The widely used definition of the concept stems from the 1996 World Food Summit in which several dimensions were underscored.The definition in wider use since then is that "food security exists when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".Availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability are the four commonly discoursed food security pillars in this definition (FAO, 2008as cited in Evita et al., 2013, p. 4).The common denominator of both food security and food insecurity is being a situation (Simon, 2012).In a contradicting way to food security, food insecurity is to be described as a state where people fail to have access to the required diet physically and economically (Dagninet & Adugnaw, 2020;Reutlinger, 1987) or the deprivation of human to food rights at varying levels (FAO, 2008;Tobin, 2009).
Lots of theories have been discoursed in food in/security studies.The reason is crucially the theories dictate research undertakings to be undergone by bodies of interest and the concerned organs.Problem identification, use of proper analytical methods, and contextually linking the study frameworks are among the basic reasons why theoretical underpinnings receive due attention in scientific investigations (Mekonnen, 2011).In this review article, the widely debated food in/ security theories, namely, the Food Availability Decline (FAD) and Food Entitlement Decline (FED) were revisited.

Food Availability Decline (FAD)
Getachew (1995) defines the Food Availability Decline (FAD) as the decline in the accessibility of nutrition to the consuming component in per capita instances.The FAD model has been argued based on the core ideas of Giovanni Botero, the Venetian thinker of the 16 th century (1588).This model is characteristically "the oldest and still the most influential approach that focuses on the existing dis/equilibrium between population and food".Alternatively, it is the Malthusian approach from Thomas Malthus (1789) who popularized it (Burchi & De Muro, 2012, p. 2).Blaikie et al. (1994) delineate that this school of thought considers mainly drought among the natural occurrences for cumulative food supply decline.Additionally, drought, pest, crop, and livestock diseases are indicated among the concerns incorporated under attributive natural hazards for the decline in food availability.This scenario is acknowledged as the stronger side of the approach (Olivier, 2009).In the literature, drawbacks are pointed out against this model.The likelihood of famine occurrence without any aggregate decline in food production and the capability of non-producing areas to access food at all times via purchase and importation prove the certainty of the drawbacks (Ali, 2008;Endale, 1992).Apart from this, FAD is advanced as "the standard approach to famines, which focuses on agricultural supply, considers that famines are chiefly caused by a sudden decline in food availability following an exogenous shock that includes epidemics and climatic shifts" (Clement, 2011, p. 8).

Food Entitlement Decline (FED)
The Food Entitlement Decline (FED) approach is among the many identities and contributions of Amartya Sen in the late 20 th century for which he has been widely acknowledged and critiqued.Starvation and famine are the basic areas of concentration for the FED approach.It highly values the capability of people to access food through legalized mechanisms such as purchase, own production, and other food acquisition modalities like from the state, namely, called entitlements.According to FED, an individual gets starved as a result of two conditions.The first one is one's failure to command sufficient diet, and the second one is the inability to circumvent starvation.Hence, people become deprived of food in such a way that they fail to entitlements that help them access food.On the other side, this approach is blamed for its generality and in consideration of all the other alternatives towards food acquiring possibilities as well as focusing on the food commanding systems legitimately practiced by people (Sen, 1981).

Major pillars of food security
The food security pillars, also acknowledged as essential dimensions, are the basic concerns widely addressed while conducting original investigations and literature overviews on food in/security statuses.The pillars are firmly tied to the fight against starvation which needs a due understanding of food security and vulnerability conditions in a world that experiences incessant changes (World Food Program, 2009a).Food availability, access, utilization, and stability are the four commonly debated food security pillars.In this review, these pillars are revisited for better clarity as follows.
Availability was the fundamental theme of the food security concept during its evolution at the world food conference held in 1974 (Meskerem & Degefa, 2015).Food availability is defined as the adequacy of food in quantity and quality accessed through diverse modalities like domestic production and imports.Food access is the ability to have sufficient resources to get appropriate foods for a diet to be fed regularly, whereas utilization, absorption alternatively, is a dietary consumption or quality-based standard that deals with nutritious and sanitary adequacy satisfying well-being through the accomplishment of the whole physiological requirements (Jones et al., 2013;World Food Program, 2009b).Stability refers to the temporal constancy of each of the mentioned three dimensions regularly without the impact of recurring shocks (D 'Souza & Jolliffe, 2016;FAO, 2006;Fiseha & Degefa, 2018;Gregory & Ingram, 2008;Peng & Berry, 2019).
Attaining the pillars has been challenging as a result of critically surging restraints that impede the accomplishment scenarios across geographies (Skaf et al., 2021;World Food Program, 2009a).From the perspective of the drought-prone rural areas of Ethiopia, households' level of perception and implementation barriers (differentials) to the existing major food security pillars are recently proposed to be considered as the fifth food security pillar.This is due to the crucial role that the differentials play in the attainment of the pillars at the household level per the studied communities' context (Thomas et al., 2021).In line with the all-time attainability pattern of food security, Simon (2012) conclusively claims that food security is a situation necessary to be attained regardless of time parameters such as moment, days, and seasons underlining permanence and sustainability.

Indicators deployed in food in/security investigations in Ethiopia
It is imperatively expected to deploy multiple food security indicators in order to check the microlevel status of food wherein the attainment of diverse food security dimensions is addressed.This is found to be fair since the pillars of food security are different which demand the deployment of different measurement systems and indicators (Alnafissa, 2017 as cited in Gebrerufael, 2019).Other scholars also persuasively assert that various measures of food in/security are vital for policy-making inputs and highly required to capture the depicted diverse food security dimensions where misclassifications of food insecure households suggestively occur as a result of such faulty deployments (Maxwell et al., 2014;Pérez-Escamillaa et al., 2017).Hence, this review was conducted to check these types of attainments from the Ethiopian perspective focusing on the inclusion of diverse measures solely and/or along with the econometric and inferential models used in combinations.

Single and or no indicator-based studies with econometric and inferential statistics
Vast arrays of studies were found in the Ethiopian context where either econometric and/or inferential models with only one measure of food security were utilized to examine the status of food security (Table 1).In the table, an attempt is exerted to show diverse food in/securityoriented instances examined by various academics.The food in/security indicator and basic pillars coverage in the scientific contributions were revisited in a total of 40 specifically included sources indicating the studies conducted in the setup of Ethiopia in the last 15 years (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022).The selection of these sources was based on the inclusion criteria, namely, the geographic scope of the studies, and the deployment of a single and/or no food in/security indicator with the use of statistical and econometric models for analysis.Consequently, the review findings showed that the commonly debated dimensions along with the indicators of food security were not fully addressed in the studies calling for holistic investigations in the future to capture all dimensions indicating the multidimensional, elusive, and difficult-to-measure nature of the food security notion.

Multiple measures-based empirical investigations
Across geographies in Ethiopia, a number of researchers contributed their works per their intended objectives.Amongst these, Dawit et al. (2008) have focused on calorie intake, anthropometrical measures, and self-declared perceptions to identify the determinants of food security in droughtaffected scenarios.Arega (2012) deployed basic indicators, namely, the Household Food Balance Model (HFBM) and the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) which revealed the statuses of the availability and consumption (quality) dimensions of food security.Demeku (2013) made use of indicators such as the HFBM and Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), wherein the availability and access pillars were focused.Degye et al. (2013) carried out their investigations on the diet quantity and quality dimensions of food security in rural Ethiopia making use of the mean daily calorie intake per AE and dietary diversity (DD) at a household level.The dietary diversity and Household Food Insecurity Access Score were used by Tesfay et al. (2014) to assess the householdlevel status of food security wherein 75% of households were found to be food insecure and 23% were exposed to the state of starvation.D 'Souza and Jolliffe (2016) conducted their analytical investigations through the implementation of measures such as HFBM, daily calories per adult equivalent (AE), and Food Consumption Scores (FCS) where households' caloric intakes indicative of the access dimension were recognized.Hussein et al. (2018) examined the nutritional status of people living with HIV/AIDS through the deployment of proxy indicators, namely, the HFIAS and HDDS that reveal the consumers' dietary intake reliably.Getachew et al. (2018) also deployed the same indicators and examined rural households' food insecurity status.
Besides, Adane et al. ( 2021) conducted an assessment of rural households' food security status making use of indicators, namely, HFIAS and Food Consumption Score (FCS) which showed the food insecurity and lesser acceptance threshold of food variety of the households that exceeded 62% and 42%, respectively.Also, Thomas et al. (2021) deployed three measures of food in/security in the drought-prone Gamo lowland setup in which households' food availability, access, and level of food insecurity were assessed by using the HFBM, HDDS, and Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), respectively.Girma (2022) employed two measures of food security, namely, the HFBM and HFIAS to investigate the food security status of households in consideration of seasonal migration and drought recurrence in which 42% and 40% of the studied households were found to be food insecure per the deployed indicators.
Since the beginning of the food security concept in the mid-1970s and the first publication of the issue in 1974 (nearly half a century), there would be ample availability of multiple-indicator-based investigations in the country.This view of the author is due to the fact that despite lots of scientific contributions on the concern in Ethiopia, multiple measure-based studies were found to be scarce in the country where the vast majority of people have been vulnerable to food insecurity across geographies.This condition strongly makes a call for contributors, actors, and other concerned bodies to embrace basic food security indicators through multiple indicator-inclusive works to examine the problems holistically and help catch multidimensionality and elusiveness of the food security concept.

Causes of food insecurity in Ethiopia
Ethiopia is among the countries prone to recurrent famine and food shortfalls (Van der Veen & Tagel, 2011).Food insecurity in the Ethiopian situation is claimed to be the most argued and the leading manifestation of underdevelopment where livelihoods predominantly rely on agriculture in the rural part (Adugna & Wagayehu, 2012;Melisew & Cochrane, 2022).In the country, like many other developing states, attaining food security at various levels has been crucially challenged by a plethora of factors.Such drivers or factors of food insecurity pose many households and their family members across different areas to face food insecurity and resultant adversities.In the literature, diverse factors that cause food insecurity in Ethiopia are reported.Consequently, both the rural and urban-oriented drivers of the problem in the Ethiopian context are revisited as presented subsequently.
Undiversified livelihood sources, undependable climatic conditions yielding resource fragility, and misguided policy narratives on agrarian growth are among the identified drivers of food insecurity.These factors undoubtedly make the attainment of food security greatly challenging and force households to be at a depressing food insecurity status.Especially, such conditions are extensively prevalent in the rural context where people's health is seriously jeopardized (Achenef et al., 2016;Devereux, 2000;Sintayehu et al., 2022;Wondim et al., 2022).Apart from these, lots of causes for the occurrence of people's vulnerability to food insecurity in Ethiopia are available in the literature.Land degradation and fertility decline, population growth, market imperfections (Melak, 2015), household-level illiteracy, family size, high dependency ratio, lack of access to credit, and low income; frequent droughts, age, marital status, and family size (Yemataw et al., 2022); rapid population growth (2.8-3%), declining landholding, overgrazing, deforestation, and rapid natural resource degradation, disease prevalence (HIV/AIDS) (Dereje & Eng, 2008;Hagos et al., 2021), drought risk, environmental degradation, demographic pressure, rural-urban migration, conflict, limited asset ownership and access to institutional services, low participation in extension and other programs, and poor agricultural technology adoption (Tariku, 2020), the production and productivity decline of the local food source (Qoltso) (Abera et al., 2019) were acknowledged among others.
On the other hand, rainfall seasonality, age of the household head, family size and off-farm and non-farm income, access to irrigation, malaria prevalence, farm income, distance to market, access to credit and farm inputs, meagre productivity, recurrent droughts and incessantly increasing population, reliance on rainfed farming, and coexisting conflicts (Bechaye, 2011;Cochrane, 2017;Peng et al., 2021;Sani & Kemaw, 2019) were further recognized among the factors that cause food insecurity in the entire context of Ethiopia.Pastoral communities' land and soil quality problems near large-scale land investments and female decision-making households furtherly pose adversities to food security yielding vulnerability to food insecurity (Adugna et al., 2021;Girma et al., 2021, Arega, 2013 as cited in;Sosina, 2021).Currently, adverse conflicts along with the worsening attacks since 2020 are the other causes of food insecurity in Ethiopia particularly in the northern part (GEOGLAM, 2022).
With regard to the urban setup, in particular, food insecurity takes place due to the increasing rate of urban poverty, the high reliance of urban households on market-dependent supplies, fluctuating prices of foods, low income, limited access to financial capital (credit) and employment, low level of human capital, poor educational and health statuses, uneducated households, and large dependent family size, household size, low income, age, education, lack of confidence to overcome food insecurity, food market instability with rising commodity prices, low employment opportunity, ownership of bank account and income from remittance and gift among others (Adimasu et al., 2019;Atimen et al., 2021;Degefa, 2010;Ejigayhu & Abdi-Khalil, 2012;Kassaye, 2020;Tesfay et al., 2014;Yawuka et al., 2018).Considerably reviewing the drivers of food insecurity in the Ethiopian setup is found to be vital.This is because demandingly the academics suggested furthering the understanding of the severity of the problem that is tied to poverty and vulnerabilities (D 'Souza & Jolliffe, 2016).

Conclusion and recommendation
This is a systematic literature review (SLR) conducted to check the deployment of multiple food in/ security indicators and the inclusion of major pillars in the scholastic studies conducted at a microlevel in Ethiopia.An effort was exerted to revisit the published works of different authors and institutions in the context of Ethiopia regardless of agroecological and settlement variations.As claimed widely and imperatively, the food security concept is a difficult scenario to be attained through the deployment of a single measure that likely shows a pillar among the four major food security dimensions commonly discussed.Various food security indicators have been developed and put into practice across the world.The intention deservedly seems to check the status of food in/security at various scales such as in the household, community, national, continental, and globalized instances.The existing related pieces of literature openly available in the databases were accessed and revisited to attain the intended objective of this overview.Accordingly, the review findings divulge the fact that the vast majority of the food in/security studies conducted in Ethiopia deployed a single indicator of food in/security at a micro-level.
On the other hand, many studies used a combination of a single food in/security indicator and either the econometric and or inferential models per their purposes and the nature of the models.Studies conducted employing multiple food security indicators were below expectations and found to be scarce in the context of the country.Characteristically, the major food security pillars demand the deployment of multiple food security measures.This is unquestionably due to the complex nature of food security and there is no utter food security indicator to measure all pillars.Hence, the review findings call for the wider deployment of multiple food security indicators such as the Household Food Balance Model, Household Dietary Diversity Score, Food Insecurity Experience Scale, and Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, among others, in food in/security investigations to make holistic conclusions per study objectives and findings embracing the commonly conversed pillars of food security to strengthen food policy debates.