Food Insecurity in Nigeria : A Thematic Exposition

A goat-centered approach to farming can help shift rural agrarian households and communities toward gender-inclusive climate change adaptation in agriculture to enhance food security and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Gender inequality, climate change, and food and nutrition insecurity are the most defining and deeply intertwined socioeconomic and environmental challenges in rural communities in this region. This chapter offers an overview of the potential of goat rearing as a sustainable and holistic approach to addressing these challenges. The failure to address gender inequality and climate change has thrown sub-Saharan Africa into a state of perpetual food scarcity due to compromised food production, consequently condemning rural communities and their people to extreme poverty and malnutrition. Because of this scenario, many internal and external development agencies have put several measures in place to alleviate the situation, which has long preyed upon the region and continues to frustrate food stability there. The total failure of the previous autonomous attempt to address the triple challenges of gender inequality climate change, and food and nutrition insecurity at the household level has led to the exploration and endorsement of more sustainable and multifaceted approaches. We propose that goat rearing is one such initiative, as it combines the empowerment of women in agriculture to ensure availability of the basic food needs of the household with sustained animal production due to goats’ ability to adapt to harsh environmental conditions. The goat-centered multifactorial approach is focused on the exploitation of the interlinkages among these socioeconomic and environmental ills. The major assumption is that goat rearing in rural economies simultaneously curtails the risk of food and nutrition insecurity by acting as an entry point of gender equality while leveraging the opportunities that goat rearing will effectively offset adversities posed by climate change. In most instances, women are potentially more vulnerable than men, as they directly experience the adverse effects of climate change in agricultural production, in turn compromising food and nutrition security. Goat rearing is central to the removal of systemic barriers that hold women back from equal participation in agriculture by broadening their socioeconomic opportunities, hence playing a significant role in agricultural value chains. The goat-rearing sustainability concept is based on establishing and maintaining the circumstances under which people and nature can subsist in productive harmony, which allows fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations. Despite the adverse effects of climate change, the goat population has continued to proliferate in the harshest agroecological regions, which demonstrates that goats have managed to adapt to the current unfriendly environmental conditions. It is assumed that promoting goat rearing will narrow the gender equality gap between men and women and enhance the participation of women in agriculture, hence improving productivity and food and nutrition security. Goats, due to their large numbers and deep embedment in rural communities, have constantly contributed to poor rural farmers’ livelihoods in many ways, and their contributions tend to be significant. This chapter reviews the potential of goat rearing as a sustainable and holistic approach to addressing the triple challenges of gender inequality, climate change, and food insecurity in rural communities of sub-Saharan Africa.

Botanical Gardens Are Well Positioned to Share Agriculture with the Public

Australia's political engagement on health and climate change: the MJA-Lancet Countdown indicator and implications for the future.

Comparing Food Security Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations When Choosing Measures

To identify and characterize the determinants of food insecurity among Inuit women. A community-based study in Igloolik, Nunavut, using semi-structured interviews (n = 36) and focus groups (n = 5) with Inuit women, and key informants interviews with health professionals (n = 13). There is a high prevalence of food insecurity among Inuit females in Igloolik, with women in the study reporting skipping meals and reducing food intake on a regular basis. Food insecurity is largely transitory in nature and influenced by food affordability and budgeting; food knowledge; education and preferences; food quality and availability; absence of a full-time hunter in the household; cost of harvesting; poverty; and addiction. These determinants are operating in the context of changing livelihoods and climate-related stresses. Inuit women's food insecurity in Igloolik is the outcome of multiple determinants operating at different spatial-temporal scales. Climate change and external socio-economic stresses are exacerbating difficulties in obtaining sufficient food. Coping strategies currently utilized to manage food insecurity are largely reactive and short-term in nature, and could increase food system vulnerability to future stresses. Intervention by local, territorial and federal governments is required to implement, coordinate and monitor strategies to enhance women's food security, strengthen the food system, and reduce vulnerability to future stressors.

In 2012, food insecurity is still a major global concern as 1 billion people are suffering from starvation, under-, and malnutrition, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has concluded that we are still far from reaching millennium development goal (MDG) number 1: to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people suffering from hunger is estimated at 239 million, and this figure could increase in the near future.There are many examples of food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, some of them having reached catastrophic dimensions, for example, in the Horn of Africa or southern Madagascar. Food insecurity is not just about insufficient food production, availability, and intake, it is also about the poor quality or nutritional value of the food. The detrimental situation of women and children is particularly serious, as well as the situation among female teenagers, who receive less food than their male counterparts in the same households.Soaring food prices and food riots are among the many symptoms of the prevailing food crisis and insecurity. Climate change and weather vagaries, present and forecast, are generally compounding food insecurity and drastically changing farming activities, as diagnosed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in June 2011.The key cause of food insecurity is inadequate food production. Since the global food crisis of 2007–2008, there has been an increasing awareness throughout the world that we must produce more and better food; and we should not be derailed from this goal, despite some relief brought by the good cereal harvests in 2011–2012. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, which needs and wants to make its own green revolution.The African challenge indeed is key to mitigating food insecurity in the world. Commitments were made by the heads of states and governments of the African Union to double the part of their domestic budgets devoted to agriculture in 2010–2011, so as to reach 10%. Technical solutions exist and there are indeed, throughout Africa, good examples of higher-yielding and sustainable agriculture. But good practices have to spread throughout the continent, while at the same time social and economic measures, as well as political will, are indispensable ingredients of Africa’s green revolution. It is also necessary that international donors fulfil their commitment to help African farmers and rural communities and protect them against unfair trade, competition, and dumping of cheap agrifood products from overseas.

Science Frontiers in Agronomy, Crops, and Soils

The Negative Bidirectional Interaction Between Climate Change and the Prevalence and Care of Liver Disease: A Joint BSG, BASL, EASL, and AASLD Commentary

This study aims at contributing to the vulnerability and adaptation to climate changes (CC) analysis of bordering communities of Togodo Reserve, in order to enhance their resilience. Specifically, the present study attempted to (i) identify the climatic hazards of the WRT; (ii) determine the impacts of climate variability and change on their livelihoods; (iii) assess the socio-economic vulnerability of these communities to food insecurity in relation to CC; and (iv) identify indigenous adaptation strategies to control the effects of CC. The methodological approach used is based on a factual research and a field investigation. The investigation is conducted in two villages around the reserve, namely Deve and Gbohoule. The results showed that climate variability and change were appreciated in different indicators by the local communities living around the WRT: Droughts, flooding, high winds and temperature increase with severe consequences on the communities (famine, destruction of tangible and intangible properties, loss of human life, populations’ migration). The communities are aware that humans are responsible for these events that have become recurrent from 2007 and occur almost every year. According to them, the causes of climate changes are deforestation (due to overexploitation of timber, fuelwood and shifting agriculture), bush fires, rapid increase in population, anger of gods due to irregularities of sacrifices and violations of customs. The communities are vulnerable to main climatic hazards and suffered from food insecurity. The factorial correspondence analysis (FCA)) carried out shows that the perception of the degree of exposure of households to risks depends on their standard of livelihood. Facing these climate events, the populations develop many adaptive strategies of which most are consistent with the national orientations and strategies. These adaptive strategies must be reinforced and supported in order to reduce the vulnerability of these populations to climate changes. Key words: Climate variability and change, communities, livelihood, vulnerability and adaptation, Wildlife Reserve of Togodo.

Youths are a formidable force in the agricultural production process, constituting a sizeable proportion of future progressive farmers and better citizens, especially in the rural areas. While their contribution towards attaining food security cannot be underestimated, their apparent lukewarm attitude towards agriculture is a source of concern and challenge to the development of agricultural extension. This study investigates rural youths’ involvement in agricultural production activities in Delta Central Agricultural Zone of Delta State. Data were collected with the aid of questionnaire from 88 youths in the study area. Data analyses were through the use of percentages, means and correlation coefficient. Findings from the study showed that more than half (64.8%) of the youths were resident in rural areas and are mainly farmers (52.3%) involved mostly in arable crop production (69.3%). A greater percentage of the respondents (69.3%) expressed unfavourable attitude towards agriculture. Attitude correlates positively and significantly with participation in agricultural production activities (r=0.435) and influenced youths interest in agricultural activities. The need to provide social amenities and infrastructures that will make the youths live and work in the rural areas is emphasized. Also there is need to stimulate youths’ interest in agriculture through effective rural youth agricultural extension programmes.

Who Eats, Where, What, and How? COVID-19, Food Security, and Canadian Foodscapes

Association of food and housing insecurity with outcomes after revascularization for chronic limb-threatening ischemia.

HIV/AIDS and food insecurity

Feeding the City, Pandemic and Beyond

The war in Ukraine, with other attendant consequences, has resulted in a massive decline in the supply of major staple foods leading to a rise in food prices globally. As the world focuses on the global food crises precipitated by the Ukrainian war; it is important to contextualize food and nutrition insecurity in the light of domestic challenges. Nigeria’s population in conflict zones have faced and will continue to face food insecurity crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity due to ruthless banditry in the northwest. For example, in 2016, the United Nations reported that Boko Haram bombings in Northern Nigeria disrupted trade routes between Chad and Nigeria, interrupting the supply of basic goods and causing local price hikes. In addition, climate change, natural disasters, violence between farmers and herders; kidnappings, and other forms of insecurity have impacted food production and distribution in Nigeria making food crisis a daily war for Nigerians. At the same time, agricultural productivity has steadily grown, and technological and institutional innovations have proliferated within agrifood markets and value chain with the potential to reduce poverty and food insecurity around the world. A food value chain (FVC) consists of all the stakeholders who participate in the coordinated production and value-adding activities that are needed to make food products. According to HLPE (2014), losses and wastes are common in all the phases of the FVCs (pre-harvest, harvesting and initial handling, storage, transport and logistics, processing and packaging, retailing and, finally, consumption activities). The agrifood value chain development in Nigeria is facing many barriers to fulfilling its potential including but not limited to capacity, enabling environment, governance, infrastructure, and policies conducive to sustainability and growth. Adding value post-production and minimizing losses with innovations in post-harvest and processing phases can have significant economic and environmental impacts, with input savings and carbon footprint reductions