Effects of Land Management Practices on Food Insecurity among Farming Households in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The effects of land management practices on food insecurity in Osun State, Nigeria was analysed through multi-stage random sampling technique by selecting two hundred and sixteen respondents and the data was collected with the means of well-structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, food security Index, fractional Logit Model and Logit Regression Model. Descriptive analysis showed that, the mean age of the respondents was 43.9 years. Farming is the major occupation of the respondents (85.19 percent). All the 216 respondents adopted more than one land management practices. The result of food security index showed that 31.02 percent of the farmers in the study area are not food secured and 68.98 percent are food secured. It was discovered that the use of land management practices have a positive relationship with food security, and the more farmers engaged in the practices, the more food secured they were. It is therefore recommended that there should be increased awareness about land management practices and since majority of the farmers rely on the use of fertilizer for production, government should subsidize the price of fertilizer and ensure it gets to the users at the right time.