Rural Household Food Security and Coping Strategies in South- West, Nigeria: A Gender Differentials Perspective

Abstract

Food insecurity remains a thorn in the flesh of most rural communities of Nigeria. Very few government efforts have succeeded in solving the problem of food shortages in rural Nigeria. Most of the previous food insecurity studies focused on rural farming communities without regard to gender issues. Focus on gender differentials in the knowledge of technologies for coping with food security has not yet been properly addressed Study data were collected with structured questionnaire and observation technique from 126  farm household and analysed using descriptive, food poverty line, and coping strategies use index.  Reduce the quantity of meal taken, reducing the number of time to eat, withdraw children from school, borrowing  money from friends and relations, occupation diversification, planting of food crops on a smale scale of land, purchasing food item on credit, sales of asset such as land, borrow money from bank, attending parties are the coping strategies used by the respondents, it was observed that there are more male headed household than female headed household in the study area,  and that  there are no significant sex differentials in the use of strategies to cope with food insecurity in south west nigeria, but men have more control of the use of productive resources.

Keywords: Food security, Coping strategies, Gender Differentials, Rural household in South west, Nigeria.