AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF HOUSEHOLDS’ FOOD SECURITY IN GOMBE STATE, NIGERIA.

Thesis Overview

<p> INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study Food security is one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals and is widely considered as important measure for evaluating the progress of a country in terms of wellbeing (Vasco, 2007). Despite, various concern by governments all over the world on ensuring that every household can at least provide three square meals for their family, food insecurity continues to be a major development problem across the globe, undermining people’s health, productivity, and often their very survival (Smith and Subandoro, 2007). Global hunger is severe, as nearly 30 per cent of the world’s population is currently suffering from one or more forms of malnutrition, including inadequate caloric consumption, protein deficiency, poor dietary quality, and inadequate concentrations of protein and micronutrients (Basudeb, Acharya, and Davis, 2007). Worldwide, approximately 840 million people are undernourished or chronically food insecure, and as many as 2.8 million children and 300,000 women die needlessly every year because of malnutrition in developing countries. (Basudeb et al, 2007). The situation is particularly worrying in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. While lack of sustained economic growth is an important determinant of hunger, the persistence of hunger also feeds back to limit economic growth. Basudeb, Brinda and Meenakshi (2007), provide empirical evidences which point to the negative impact of hunger and malnutrition on labour productivity, health, and education, which ultimately leads to lower levels of overall economic growth. Hunger is thus as much a cause as an effect of poverty. These studies suggest that hunger has a direct effect on poverty and good nutrition is an investment in human capital that raises output as well as the returns on investments in education and health care. Taken together, these findings provide powerful evidence that public spending in reducing hunger is an investment with high returns and should constitute a top priority for developing countries. <br></p><p> According to (Maxwell, 1996) as cited by Mauro, Davis, Calogero, and Kathleen (2007), the conceptualization of food security has evolved over time, partly preceding and partly paralleling similar evolutions in poverty. Since the World Food Conference (WFC) of 1974, food security paradigms have shifted from the global and national level to the household and individual level. Measuring food insecurity at the individual/household level rather than the national level differs from the more traditional approach of identifying food insecurity as the inadequacy of aggregate supply of and accessibility to food. Given the weaknesses of the supply side approach to food insecurity, several different methods have been put forward including measuring variables (e.g. household income, height to weight ratios) generally thought to be correlated with food insecurity. Recently, however, dissatisfaction with these measures has led to the use of direct measures of food insecurity such as household food consumption and expenditure data (based on recalls) and qualitative measures. <br></p><p> According to Webb et al, (2006) as cited by Mauro (2007) argued that Measuring and assessing food insecurity hinged on two contending views; objective-quantitative methods and subjectivequalitative techniques for the measurement of food insecurity. However, more recently, these two methods have been increasingly viewed as complementary, and it has become evident that a suite of indicators is necessary to capture the multifaceted nature of food security. Towards this end, the use of household expenditure and consumption surveys containing both objective and subjective information on the same household potentially provides a valuable workbench for this type of study. <br></p><p> <b>1.2. Statement of Problem&nbsp;</b></p><p>Evidence suggests that Nigerians food production is increasing at less than 2.0% while population growth rate is estimated to be 2.5% per annum, (NPC and Aku, 2012). Thus the increasing evidence of change in population and available food production has generated contention and empirical question. This suggested theoretical disparity indicate that low rate of food production and high rate of population growth will generate high rate of food demand, thereby causing food Demand-Supply gap which can give rise to food insecurity. According to Njoku (2012) as cited by (Aku, 2012), Nigeria spends over 13 trillion Naira annually on the importation of basic food items including; Wheat, Rice, Sugar and Fish. More so, Malnutrition is widespread in the entire country and rural areas are especially vulnerable to chronic food shortages, unbalanced nutrition, erratic food supply, poor quality foods, high food costs, and even total lack of food (Isaac, 2009). There is a high level of malnutrition among children in rural Nigeria and the figures differ with geopolitical zones, with about 56 percent reported in a rural area of South West and 84.3 percent in three rural communities in the northern part of Nigeria (Isaac 2009). However, these distributions differ across state in Nigeria. Gombe state has an estimated population growth of 3.2 % per annum while food production is growing at slow rate. According to (UNICEF, 2012), Gombe State has prevalence rate of 8.1% severely malnourished children, and the continuing degree of malnutrition with stunting affecting 41 per cent of the children under five; 14 per cent are wasted, 23 per cent are under weight, 13.7 per cent of new born are born with birth weight below 2500 grams. This outcome along with high level of poverty and falling output of agricultural suggest that hunger has a direct effect on poverty and good nutrition which is an investment in human capital that raises output as well as the returns on investments in education and health care.</p><p> 1.3. Research Questions&nbsp;</p><p>This study formulates the following questions:</p><p>&nbsp;i. What is the nature and magnitude of food insecurity in Gombe State, Nigeria;&nbsp;</p><p>ii. What are the causes of food insecurity Gombe State, Nigeria;&nbsp;</p><p>iii. What is the relationship between food security, poverty and income; &nbsp; <br></p><p> <b>1.4. Objectives of the Study</b>&nbsp;</p><p>The broad objective of this study is to analyze food security situation of households in Gombe State, Nigeria. The specific objectives are</p><p>&nbsp;i. To estimate the extent and magnitude of household food insecurity in the study area;</p><p>&nbsp;ii. To find out the causes of food insecurity and;&nbsp;</p><p>iii. To also access the relationship between food security, poverty and income <br></p>