ABSTRACT
Food security and poverty among farming households have become an issue of great concern to policy makers and stakeholders in the agricultural sector as its understanding and concepts can help to reduce the recurring storm of poverty, food insecurity in Nigeria and the global community. Hence, the study assessed food security and poverty status of cereal crop farmers under fadama III+ additional financing in Niger State, Nigeria with the aim of providing empirical results which will serve as an important step towards improving the food security status of cereal farmers in the study area. The specific objectives were to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of cereal crop farmers, assess the food security and poverty status of cereal farmers, identify the determinants of food security and poverty status of cereal farmers, assess the effects of food security and poverty status on the output of cereal crop farmers, examine the constraints faced by cereal crop farmers in the study area. A three stage sampling technique was used to select a total of 207 respondents in the study area on which structured questionnaire were administered to extract relevant information; data collected were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics such as Foster, Greer and Thorbeeke (FGT) model, logit regression as well as Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression model. The result of the socio-economic characteristics revealed that most (36.27%)of the cereal crop farmers were within the age range of 31- 40 years, the mean age of respondents was 39 years, majority were males (95.70%) who were married (91.30%) and had majorly tertiary education (55.35%) with a mean household size of 15 people (23.10%). The mean farming experience was 20 years, mean farm size was 4 hecters, while mean income was ₦481, 034.8 per farming cycle. The result also showed that most of the farmers had no extension visits (39.10%), years in cooperative society had (36.70%) with a mean of 6 years. The result also showed that, more than half were not food secure (59.90%), the FGT measure of poverty indicated that (41.50%) of cereal crop farmers were living below poverty line. The poverty depth was (59.73%), while the severity of poverty was (39.80%). The logit regression result showed that income and extension contact were positively and statistically significant at, 10% level of probability. Similarly, years in school, household size and years in cooperative was negatively significance on poverty status of cereal farmers at 5%, 1% and 5% level of probability respectively. Furthermore, effects of food security and poverty on the output of cereal crop farmers were age, education, household size, farm size, farming experience, extension contact, poverty status and food security. The major constrains to cereal production in the study area were problems of road network, flooding, lack of credit facilities, high cost of hired labour, lack of storage facility, inadequate irrigation facility, inadequate supply of inputs, inadequate farm land, poor soil fertility and problem of weed among others. It was therefore, recommended that, non- governmental organizations, farmer groups and cooperative societies should be more involved in the training and education of farmers since they understand their weaknesses and where to complement. Also, storage facilities should be provided to reduce the large quantity of wastes recorded yearly, this will go a long way in reducing poverty levels and sustaining food security status.
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