Abstract

This study assessed food security status among farming households in Oluyole area of Oyo state, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 120 farmers. Data were collected with the aid of interview schedule and analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, mean and Logistic regression analysis. The result revealed that 60.8% of the farmers were male, 33.3% had secondary school education and the mean age was 51 years with an average household size of 6 persons. Findings also revealed that 86.7% of the households were food insecure while only 13.3% were food secure, some of the factors responsible for food insecurity with their mean score include unavailability of locally produced food (2.77), changes in the price of food items (2.22) and household income (2.56). Result of hypothesis testing revealed that there is a significant relationship between sex (?=-1.765, p<0.05), years of farming (?=-0.121, p<0.05), household income (B=0.012, p<0.05) and food security among the farming households. Based on the findings, it was therefore concluded that most of the farming households were food insecure. Therefore, it is recommended that efforts should be made at improving access of farming households to production resources by the government or non-government organizations, since they are involved in the agricultural value chain. Farmers of all gender should be exposed to cost-effective food production, processing and storage strategies. The government should be firm on policies that will encourage local food production if the attainment of food security will not be a mirage in Nigeria.

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