CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
to the Study
Food security issues have continually attracted the attention
of the world leaders. The discussions of the world food summit of 1996 in Rome
(Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO,2014) and that of the trade ministers
from around the world in Doha 2001 (Trueblood and Shapouri, 2002) were centered
on world food security matters especially in the least developed countries of
the world. In 1974, the world leaders declared during the world food conference
that ―every man, woman and child has the inalienable right to be free from
hunger and malnutrition in order to develop their physical and mental
faculties‖ (FAO, 2014). As a follow-up to this, the world food summit of 1996
set the target of eradicating hunger in all countries, with an immediate view
of reducing the number of undernourished people by half not later than 2015
(FAO, 1999).
Eighteen years after the Rome declaration however and less
than a year to the set target, FAO (2014) stated that about 805 million people
were estimated to be chronically undernourished in 2012-14 and that one out of
every nine people in the world still has insufficient food. It was also noted
that most of the undernourished people (791 million) live in developing
countries, includingNigeria. Currently, Nigeria is ranked thirty-eighth out of
76 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI), having a GHI of 14.7
(International Food Policy Research Institute, IFPRI, 2014). Though this shows
a slight improvement over the 2011 figure of GHI 15.5 (IFPRI, 2011), it is
still outside an acceptable range for the global food security target (GHI of
≤4.9).However, the GHI report of 2016 that show the countries status for the
year 2015 is of great concern as Nigeria has sunk deeper to having a GHI of
25.5 a category described by IFPRI (2016)
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as serious. This is of concern because the GHI mirrors the
food security situation of the nation. It is designed to comprehensively and
track hunger globally and by country and region. The GHI is an indicator that
is calculated based on four important components/indicators that is linked to
correct feeding (food security). The first of these indicators is
undernourishment (the proportion of undernourished people in as a percentage of
the population). This reflects the share of the population with insufficient
caloric intake. The second indicator is child wasting, which is the proportion
of children under the age of five that have weights that are too low for their
heights. The third indicator, child stunting is based on the proportion of
children under the age of five that who suffer from stunting (low height for
their ages). The second and the third indicators of GHI are reflection of acute
and chronic under nutrition. The final indicator hinges on child mortality of
children under the age of five which partially reflects the fatal synergy of
inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments (IFPRI, 2016).
In the report of Ibrahim and Oyewole (2010), major
interventions have been initiated by the government of Nigeria aimed at
increasing the domestic food production. This was as a result of the output
drop in the agricultural and food sector following the shift of attention from
agriculture to the oil sector in the early 1970‘s. One of such interventions
include irrigation agriculture. Irrigation farming is the provision of the
right amount of water at the right time for plant growth and development.
Nigeria is characterized by fair to good soil environment but poor and
unreliable rainfall, especially in the arid and semi-arid areasof the
north-western Nigeria (Oriola,2009). According to Dauda, Asiribo, Akinbode,
Saka and Salahu, (2009), irrigation farming has increased in Nigeria in the
recent times and to improve agricultural productivity, especially in areas of
low rainfall of northern Nigeria, irrigation farming has been adopted as best
alternative.
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They went further to state that globally; massive
investments have been made in the development of irrigation schemes so as to
make the supply of food possible throughout the year.
According to Anon (2008) as cited in Dauda et al.(2009),
about 90% of the country‘s food is produced by small scale farmers cultivating
small plots of land and depend on rainfall rather than irrigation system. Thus,
how the country‘s economy performs depends largely on the performance of the
small scale farmers because they dominate the economy. Therefore, given
agricultural prominence in Nigeria‘s economy, performance of small scale
farmers in the sector should be of great concern to policy makers (Asogwa, Umeh
and Penda, 2011) especially towards being a food secured nation. One important
thing to note again is that these small-scale farmers have needs or goals for
going into the farming business. The basic and most important of such goals are
food security and income generation to satisfy their non-food needs. Resource
allocation therefore is done based on these felt needs.
Helen (2002) as cited in Okwoche and Asogwa, (2012) reported
that food security maintains political stability and ensures peaceful
coexistence among people. It was stated further that food insecurity results in
poor health and hinders optimal performance in children and adults. According
to FAO (2014), food security exists when ―all people, at all times, have
physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food
which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active healthy
life‖. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the level of food security
among rural farming households that practice irrigation in the north-western
Nigeria.
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1.2 Statement
of Problem
With majority of Nigerians residing in rural areas and about
two-thirds engaged in crop and livestock production for their own use and
market sales,yet the country faced with the challenge of meeting the basic food
needs of its population (Adepoju and Adejare, 2013),shows that there is a food
production gap. Food and nutrition security is closely tied to agricultural
productivity. This is because higher production on one‘s own farm or from one‘s
livestock improves the food security status of the household and vice versa. In
some areas in the northern Nigeria, the long period of dry season does not help
the matter in any way as people who depend on rain-fed farming had to wait till
the next rainy season. Irrigation however provides an opportunity to reduce the
wide gap between food production from rain fed agriculture and the food need of
the population. Irrigation contributes to livelihood improvement through
increased income, food security, employment and poverty reduction (Hussain and
Hanjra 2004; Lipton 2003). Therefore, irrigation can be an indispensable
technological intervention to increase household income (Speelman et al.,
2008).
Nigeria is endowed with 74 million hectares of arable and
another 2.5 million of irrigable land, yet the country is still hungry (Oriola,
2009). Empirical studies have shown that irrigation has a positive impact on
household food security and poverty (Tekema and Oladele, 2011, and Jema and
Mohammed, 2013). It was based on that, according to GoM (2011) in IFPRI (2014),
many developing countries affected by drought and floods promote irrigation
interventions to reduce poverty and promote food security. Despite such
intervention, in Nigeria, the presence of chronic hunger is still
manifest.According to West Africa Insight (2010), the northern states were more
at the receiving end of the dwindling food production capacity, rising food
prices, and
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dependency on food importation than in the other parts of
the country. As noted by Abimbola and Kayode (2013), a large proportion ofNigeria
households are still food insecure despite the several efforts by successive
governments to achieve food security through setting up of various agricultural
development institutions, programmes and projects. This is at variance with
what one will expect if the opportunities provided by irrigated land in this
region were fully maximized. This however leaves a gap be covered. If farmers
with vast land resources (as is available in northern Nigeria) have the
opportunity of food production throughout the year and yet they are not able to
produce enough for their households, there is a problem of productivity.
North-west Nigeria is known for grain production as many are
known to engage in farming. But at the same time, poverty is prevalent. Report
has it that the region is the poorest (and no doubt, the hungriest). This is a
source of worry calling for investigation of their farming activities. Most
often than not, farmers are known to combine crops on their farms. This is in
an attempt to produce most of the food they need (because many are small-scale
farmers). Food security has a clear nexus with food production which is in turn
determined by the cropping pattern of the households. If the farming households
are working and yet are reported to be poor, then factors that are linked to
productivity such as crop combinations may be the challenge. It is important to
note that the farmers have their reasons for crop combination- meeting up with
household food needs.
Ad de veld (2004), opined that the question of what to
produce is critical and can constitute a problem to a producer. Producers
attempt in answering this question, he further stated, depends on two factors:
the demand (needs of the people) and the resources available. Most small-scale
farming household‘s production is majorly stimulated by the household food
needs and little attention is given to the household resource combination
capacity to produce the enterprise combinations. This research
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therefore seeks to investigate the problem of productivity
from the perspective of farm optimization. It is to see if the irrigation
farming households are optimal in their choice of enterprise combinations. The
enterprise combinations of households based on their needs will naturally
attempt to include what will make the household to be food secured but may not
necessarily be supported by the household available resources.
There are growing studies on food insecurity in the Northern
part of Nigeria. Some of them only categorize the households to food secure and
food insecure but few ones focus on describing the various levels of food
insecurity. This is another gap that this study has covered which provided
opportunity to give policy suggestions peculiar to each level of food
insecurity. Policy formulation without disaggregating food security levels
among households will not help. The examination of the effectiveness of food
insecurity copping is sacrosanct and urgent especially among the irrigation
farming households. Also, according to Niragira et al.(2015), there is an
optimal farm crop combination mix that produces enough output to meet the need
of household despite all constraints. Does this really exist among the
irrigation farmers in the north-western Nigeria? This and more questions needed
to be answered. In order to investigate properly, the following more research
questions were asked: