AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGES IN NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

Nigeria is a country unlike any other in Africa blessed with abundant natural resources. One would expect such country to soar undoubtedly towards sustainable development even considering its abundance of human resources. Consequently, economic problems such as food insecurity, hunger, water shortages and the likes should be of no major concern. Sadly, empirical studies over the years have proven such a priori expectation to be lacking in Nigeria. This research seeks to investigate the challenges which pose a barrier towards the attainment of food security by households in the country. Using a well structured questionnaire which served as a major research instrument for the collection of primary data, the factors which affect household food security were obtained by using the Binary Logit model in the SPSS statistical software coupled with descriptive analysis. It was discovered that climatic changes, access to market and land use are crucial determinants of food security and they positively influence food security while gender, education and income of the farmer significantly affects their awareness of food security. This research also revealed that without improvements in the food security status of household, hunger would not be the only problem the country would be worried about during unwarranted pandemics as in the case of Covid-19. Therefore, the study succinctly recommends that creating food security awareness as well as its importance in farmers should be a top priority to government officials, also the provision of modern inputs, storage facilities and technological know-how of these inputs should be provided to small scale farmers so as to increase productivity and preparedness for rainy days such as pandemics, conflicts and curfews. Finally, markets should be made closer to the people so they can afford the already inflated food prices in the market; subsidized transport means could be a better alternative.