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

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

Abstract

Food security is one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is widely considered a useful measure for evaluating the progress of a country in terms of wellbeing. Despite, various concern by governments all over the world on ensuring that every household can at least provide three square meals per day, food insecurity continues to be a major development problem across the globe, undermining people’s health, productivity, and often their very survival. 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. The 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. Thus the study analyzed household food security in Gombe state using household expenditure and consumption surveys containing both objective (quantitative) and subjective (qualitative) data. The study revealed that on average, only 14 percent of the households are food secure. Hence, 46 percent of the households are food insecure without hunger and 35 percent are food insecure with hunger. On the other hand, the outcome showed that on average, less than 50 percent of the households could afford to consume the minimum dietary requirement of 2400kcal. Furthermore, the findings also showed that at least 27 percent of the household live below one Dollar (1$), 54 percent are fairly living on a dollar while only 19 percent live above one dollar. A number of factors such as assets, income, and occupation level of education indicators are correlated with perceptions of greater food adequacy.

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

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