Understanding the Link Between Households' Poverty and Food Security in South West Nigeria

The recurring storm of poverty and food insecurity in the sub-Sahara Africa has continually posed major challenge to the global community. This signals an alarming threat to the region's ability to fully achieve the desired sustainable development. In this regard, this study based its assessment on farming households' poverty and food insecurity relationship in some selected states of Nigeria. The emperical findings presented here relied on data collected with a structured questionnaire through a multistage sampling from 420 rural farming households from 18 rural communities of the Southwest Nigeria. Specifically, the research paper examined the socio-economic characteristics of the farming households in the study area and empirically analyzed the effect of poverty on their food security level. Data were analyzed using linear regression with endogenous treatment effect. The Chi-square value of 1276.33, which was significant at (p<0.01) gave an indication that the chosen model well fitted while, the multicollinearity test among the variables was carried out with variance inflation factor (VIF), with a the mean VIF of 1.27 .In the same vein, independent variables that significantly affect the households' food security status in the Linear regression with endogenous treatment model were gender (p<0.05), age (p<0.01), educational status (p<0.10), household size (p<0.01), marital status of the households' head (p<0.01) and households' poverty status (p<0.01). It was concluded that poverty among the rural farming households was a key contributor to the households' food insecurity. The empirical findings of the study therefore, recommends among others that considerable investment in human capital should be encouraged since that could help in reducing poverty and food insecurity in the study area. Also, there should be intensification of enlightenment campaigns and programs on birth control measures and on the benefits of small household size as increase in households size increases the odd food insecurity among the rural dwellers. Finally, workable strategy at encouraging the teeming unemployed youths to participate in agriculture should be intensified and articulated by the government of the day.