Assessment of Farming Households’ Food Security Status and their Determining Factors in some selected Local Government Areas of Kaduna State

Abstract

The study assessed the farming households’ food security status and their determining factors in Kaduna State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was employed in the data collection where 360 respondents were administered questionnaires with the help of enumerators. Descriptive statistics was used to assess the socioeconomic characteristics while Logit Regression Model was used for the determinants. From the data, it was revealed that 39 years was the average year while the household size averaged 13 persons. It also revealed an average experience of 27 years among the farming households, educational attainment varied among the farming households with 29.3% attaining primary, 24.8% secondary, 17.5% tertiary, 12.4% with no formal education and 16% had quaranic education. The data revealed that the farming households were dominate by male with 89.3%. The study also revealed that 54.8% of the farming households to be food insecure while 45.2% to be food secure having fell below the security line of N23,963.47. The study additionally revealed that the coefficient of income had a positive relationship in determining food security status and significant at 10%, education was negatively significant at 5%, membership with positive value and significant at 10%, farm size was negative and significant at 5% while access to credit was found to have a positive influence on food security status of the farming households and met the a priori expectations.