Achieving Sustainable Household Food Security among the Poorest Segment of the Society: Lessons from Nigeria

摘要

While we bask in the euphoria of the new millennium, starvation and malnutrition remains serious threat to over a billion people worldwide, according to the World Food Summit. The situation is gravest in the 49 countries that make up Sub-Saharan Africa. In this regard, emergency response mechanisms relate to specific intervention of the food crisis broached through participatory methodologies incorporating broad-based variables of interest. For this purpose, a recent country program in Nigeria focussing on agriculture and rural development that initiate a policy cycle has revealed some new policy thrust for sustainability. Specifically, the significant increase in volume of farm production within the project area and implicit enhancement of the income of poor farmers generated through capacity building and use of low cost agricultural tools incorporating environment friendly agronomic practises has emerged as a model to enhance agricultural productivity. The evident output realised and impact achieved through the 'Bottom-Top' approach to development programs has guaranteed people's participation and ownership. This dynamic variable as a subset of the overall national (agricultural) policy framework is expected to induce considerable multiplier effects to achieve sustained economic growth and food security as well as explicit 'trickle down' effects in poverty alleviation terms.