The impact of food security and poverty status on rural household farmers in Ikwo, Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Issues relating to food availability, accessibility/affordability, and food utilization remain of utmost importance to various stakeholders including policymakers and academics. As food security becomes a concern, poverty deepens systematically, and the meager income earned could not cover basic needs. The objective of this work was to analyze the food security and poverty status of the household farmers in Ikwo., Ebonyi State, Nigeria. For this study, a multistage sampling technique was used to select seventy-five farming households using a structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study used, Radimer/ Cornell’s questionnaire to measure the food insecurity of households; the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke model was used to measure the poverty status and Logit regression for determinants of food security. The food insecurity measure showed that 74.7% of the households were food secure. This showed that the monthly expenditures of 75% of the households were above the food security index. The poverty measure of the households shows that 21.3% points of the households express the incidence of poverty while 6.63% points and 2.81% points were found to have depth and severity of incidence of poverty, respectively. One out of the nine variables used as predictors of food security was statistically significant at p<0.05 level of probability. The Logit regression model indicated that income significantly influenced food security scenarios with respect to some of the indicators such as gender of household head, age of household head, farm size, farming experience, household size and education. The households’ coping strategies were reduction in meal size by 85.3%, purchasing simple foods (78.7%), and extra income-generating activities (76.0%). The study concluded that most of the households were food secure and 21.3% fell below the poverty line. The Government should provide credible sources to enable farming households increase production and earn more income.