Abstract

Backyard farming has been one of the routes to sustainable food availability and accessibility for households. The study investigated the contributions of involvement in home gardening to the welfare of rural households in Egbeda Local Government Areas of Oyo state. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select 120 respondents for the study using an interview schedule. Data on respondents? social-economic characteristics, involvement in home gardening, benefits derived from home gardening and welfare status were collected and analysed using percentages, frequency, mean, Chi-square, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation at ?0.05. Result shows that the respondents? mean age, household size and monthly income were 43.0?13.0 years, 5.0?3.0 persons and N145,000 respectively. Most of the respondents were female (52.1%), married (79.5%) and had tertiary education (53.0%) while the most involved home gardening was cultivation of Corchorus (1.57) which was high for 55.6%. The benefits derived from home gardening were easy source of fresh food (1.66) and better nutrition security (1.61) and was high for (62.4%) of the respondents. Result from welfare domain shows that the mostly consumed food item by the respondents was Rice (3.36) with highest expenditure been on Food items (?95,000); with high welfare status for 55.6%. A significant relationship existed between respondents? marital status (?2=11.321), age (r=0.357), household size (r=0.207), involvement in home gardening (r=0.299), benefits derived (r=0.205) and respondents? welfare status. The study concluded that the respondents had better welfare status based on their involvement in home gardening. Hence, home gardening should be encouraged for better household nutrition.

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