During 2008, many Sub-Saharan African economies have been obliged to suspend their imports tariffs to the magnitude of the food crisis. Frequent riots experienced in several cities have then raised the deep issue of food security. The purpose of this paper is to identify for the case of Senegal the major causes of food insecurity among rural households which are more affected, in particular farmers. A binomial logit model based on the Senegalese household data (Esam I) is used to identify the most influential probable causes of food insecurity among landowners. The results showed that the probability of food insecurity among landowners is at its highest for large size farmers operating in the Groundnut Belt and at its lowest for small farmers whose activities are located in agro-ecological river areas. Income and consumption diversification factors like income from livestock and net transfers seem to hardly reduce the probability of food insecurity. The risk is also significantly diminished for landowners who have access to agricultural and pastoral goods for self-sufficient needs. Household size plays a key role in the issue at hand for all landowners. Policymakers must then set some mechanism which will sustain farmers so that they can receive their part of overall increasing economic growth benefits. In particular, by trying to understand their specific agro-ecological conditions, they can identify which of the key programs to address. More generally, creating programs and making policies that are flexible and reflect the needs, conditions, and resources in each rural area is quite a challenge for policy makers.
