Impact of Fadama III Project on the Food Security Status of Beneficiary and Non Beneficiary Farmers in Kabba/Bunu LGA, Kogi

Abstract

The study examined the impact of Fadama III project on the food security status of beneficiary and non beneficiary farmers in Kabba/Bunu LGA of Kogi state, Nigeria. A two stage sampling technique was used to select 5 villages out of the 15 villages in the area and 18 beneficiary and non beneficiary farmers from each village giving a total o 180 respondents. Generated data were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis, logistic regressions, food security index (FSI), food insecurity gap (FIG), headcount ratio (HCR) and surplus index (SI). Analysis of the socioeconomic variables revealed that most of the beneficiary farmers are within the age of 40 – 49 years while most of the non beneficiary farmers are within the age of 30 – 39 years. About 15% of the beneficiary farmers had no formal education while 46% of the non beneficiary farmers had no formal education. The crop output level of the farmers showed that beneficiary farmers had more output than the non beneficiary farmers with an output difference of 1% before fadama programme and a crop output difference was 9.5% after the project. Similarly, the farmers had 0.16% difference in their level of consumption before the fadama project and 13.9% difference in their consumption level after the project in favour of beneficiary farmers. The result further show that 75(83%) of the beneficiary farmers are food secure as against about 39(34%) of the non beneficiary farmers. The mean FSI of food secure beneficiary farmers was 3.88 while that of food secure non beneficiary farmers had 1.98. The FIG/SI of food insecure household of non beneficiary farmers and beneficiary farmers were 29% and 49% respectively.  The logistic regressions analysis shows that the socioeconomic characteristics considered had significant relation with access to fadama project except age, household size and marital status that had no significant relationship. The study established that shortage of water, late supply of inputs and high fadama user group contribution were the problems associated with the project in the area. The major food insecurity coping strategies were purchasing food on credit (99%), reducing size of food per meal (89%), consuming seed stock for next season (86%), borrowing food (81%) and rationing money to buy prepared food (73%). It was therefore concluded that the level of farmer – extension contact was low, the farmers operate on a small scale level and Fadama III programme increased the crop output and consumption levels of both the beneficiary farmers and non beneficiary farmers. Based on the conclusions, it was recommended that the Agricultural Development Project (ADP) should ensure regular contacts with farmers to expose them to the benefits of Fadama farming, the ADP and the Local Agricultural Authority should help the farmers and liaise with the State Fadama office to ensure early supply of material inputs and government at the state level should ensure an alternative source of water.

Keywords: Fadama, Food Security, Beneficiary, Kabba/Bunu, Kogi