Achieving Sustainable Food Security in Nigeria: Challenges and Way Forward

One of the goals of Nigeria’s agricultural development policy is to ensure that the nation produces enough food and less dependent on importation so as to ensure adequate and affordable food for all. Using descriptive statistics, this study is an attempt to evaluate food security situation in Nigeria from 1991 to 2015. The paper shows that there is a shortfall in domestically produced food in Nigeria because the growth in the population of Nigeria is at the rate of 3.2% while the growth in food production has been less than one. This shows that demand for food (population) is greater than the supply (agricultural production) because of factors such as inconsistent government policies, environmental degradation and non-sustainable agricultural production. The paper also shows that Nigeria depends so much on food importation. To achieve sustainable food security in Nigeria, the paper recommends an improvement in environmental management in other to increase agricultural productivity