FUW TRENDS IN SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY JOURNAL
(A Peer Review Journal)
e–ISSN: 2408–5162; p–ISSN: 2048–5170
keywords: Food security status, coping strategies, rural households
This study analyzed the food security status and coping strategies among rural households in Oluyole local government areas of Oyo State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of rural farming household heads, determine the level of food security status of the respondents, identify the coping strategies of rural household towards food insecurity in the study area and identify the causes of food insecurity encountered by respondents in the study area. A multistage sampling technique was used to collect primary data from 150 household heads using questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that 79.3 % of the respondents were male and 86.7 % were married. 96.6 % were educated and cultivated an average of about 1.74 hectares of farmland. The mean per capita food expenditure per month was estimated to be ₦6,470.46 and the 2/3 mean per capital food expenditure for the entire household was ₦4,313.64, the value was used as food security index; 58.7 % of the households were food secured. The respondents adopted several strategies to cope with food insecurity such as selling livestock to buy food, rationing money, purchasing food on credit, borrowing money, buying of less expensive food, skipping meals, allowing children to eat first, harvesting immature food crops, migrating to search job,off farm employment and consuming seed reserve. It is recommended that food security policy strategies to be put in place by the government should consider the socio-economic characteristics of households in order to achieve more than a marginal reduction in the number of food insecure households.
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