Key Features:

No of Chapters: 5
No of Pages: 166
Methodology: Chi Square

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Introduction:

Background of the Study
Food security has become an issue of global concern in recent times. Nigeria with her huge endowed natural and human resources is not spared. In Nigeria, food accounts for a larger and increasing share of family budgets for majority of rural and urban families. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO, 2008), an agency of the United Nations once raised alarm that Nigeria food situation was in dire straits.

State involvement in agriculture in Nigeria dates back to the colonial era, which marked the beginning of direct government involvement in agriculture development. The agricultural policy of the colonial government was primarily focused on encouraging only export crops like cocoa, rubber, palm, cotton and groundnut to support the Agro-industries in Europe. This started within the establishment of research stations in Samuru (1921), Umudike (1923) and Moor plantation (1924).
The government's priority at that time was to boost domestic production, particularly of the cash crops. This strong intervention pushed Nigeria to the position of the world's top producer of rubber, groundnut and palm oil, and the world's second largest cocoa producer at Independence (Onuwalaetal., 2004).

The Nigeria government was able to execute investment projects through earnings from export of agricultural products. In the 1940s and 1950s, Nigeria agricultural export commodities contributed over 75 per cent of the total annual merchandise exports (Ekpo and Egwaikhide, 1994; cited in Oni, 2012). Up to late
1960s agricultural products dominated Nigeria's non-oil export trade accounting for nearly 70 percent of the value of non-oil exports.
However, the introduction of petroleum into the nation's export trade had changed the composition and structure of the export trade. The oil sector which initially contributed modestly to the economy in the 1960s, became more important in the 1970s and it is now overwhelmingly important to the point of the economy becoming dependent on it, providing about 95 per cent of foreign exchange earnings as well as 65 percent of budgetary revenue (CBN, 2010) cited in (Oni, 2012).

Prior to the 1970s, there was no clear food consumption crisis in Nigeria (Aromolaran and Aromolaran, 1999). The food crisis became obvious when the contribution of agriculture to the economy began to decline in the early 1970s coupled with the outbreak of the civil war between 1967 and 1970 where food was used as a weapon of war. Nigerian government truncated food supply to the war-torn area which led to malnutrition. One of the major signs of malnutrition was kwashiorkor, a protein deficiency disease which was widespread during the period. Starvation in Nigeria/Biafra attracted international attention. Through the relief activities of international bodies different types of European foods were brought into the country and became available to a large number of people. Such foods included rice, milk, wheat flour, assorted kinds of canned foods and beverages. Gradually, many people developed a taste for these foods, which before the war, were only available and demanded by the elites.