Abstract

Rice is an essential and strategic commodity in the Nigerian economy, and Nigeria has ecologies that are suitable for rainfed rice which can be harnessed to enhance rice production to meet the food and dietary requirements of its population, and even to produce surplus for export. This informed the need to examined household food security among rainfed lowland rice communities in Sokoto state, Nigeria, with a view to identifying the influence of rice outputs and other relevant factors on food security status. Using a multistage random sampling technique, 300 farmers were randomly selected from six purposively selected local government areas noted for rainfed lowland rice production in Sokoto state. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Food Security Core Module (FSCM) categorical measure and the Logit regression model. The result demonstrates that rainfed lowland rice production in the study area was dominated by middle aged (31-40 years) and ageing males (41-50 years). The farmers had an average family size of between 6 and 10 members with 59.67% having Qur’anic education. The result also revealed that 76.33 percent of the rainfed rice households were food insecure, and only 23.67 percent of the rainfed rice farmers were food secure. Result of the logit regression analysis shows that rice output (p<0.01), education (p<0.05) and off-farm income (p<0.01) positively and significantly influenced the food security status of the rainfed rice farmers in the study area. On the other hand, family dependents ((p<0.05)) had a negative influence on food security status of the farmers The study admonished farmers to increase their output by adopting yield boosting technologies, diversify their source of income and raise their level of education in order to improve their food security statuses.

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