The influence of food security on sustainable land management technologies of farming households in Kwara state, Nigeria

Poor land management practices are degrading soils and undermining food security. Despite this, there is scant information regarding the effect of food security on a household decision to adopt SLM technologies. This paper, therefore, measured the food security status and assessed the effect of food security on SLM technologies. A structured interview schedule was used to gather data for this study. A three-stage sampling procedure was employed for this study. Two out of four agricultural development project (ADP) zones were randomly selected in the first stage. This was followed by a proportionate selection of 30 villages from the two selected zones. Lastly, ten farming households were picked randomly from each selected village to make up a sample consisting of 300 farming households. The result revealed that the calculated mean per capita food expenditure (MPCFE) was NGN 4,218.587 and the proportion of food-secure and food-insecure households were 37.7% and 62.3% respectively. The findings further affirmed that there are ample opportunities for increasing the use of SLM technologies among the food insecure-households when compared with their food-secure counterparts. The R2 value of 29.8% suggests that the explanatory variables explained about 30% of the variation in the explained variable. Furthermore, the factors influencing SLM technologies of households include food security status, family size, age of the household head and plot size. This study provides a useful insight into policies and actions taken by farmers and the government to mitigate the effects of suboptimal use of SLM technologies for improved production and food security. Policies favouring an increase in plot size should be vigorously pursued.