ASSESSMENT OF FOOD SECURITY STATUS AND COPING STRATEGIES AMONG THREE NORTHERN STATES OF SASAKAWA AFRICA ASSOCIATION, NIGERIA PROJECT

The study was conducted in three (3) Sasakawa Africa Association target states of Gombe, Jigawa and Kano, Northern region of Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling procedure was employed for the survey. Three states were purposively selected been the project states for the Agro-processing Enterprise Centre Models (AECM). Three Local Government Areas each were also purposively selected in Jigawa and Kano and four LGAs were purposively selected in Gombe being the LGAs were AECM were implemented. All the communities in each of the selected LGAs where the centre model is implemented were considered. An online sampling calculator was used to arrive at a total sample size of three hundred respondents (300 respondents) in which 100 respondents were randomly selected from among each of the selected three states. Results of the analysis showed that Food utilization of households across the three states were generally acceptable as revealed by the FCSs. On the average 98.7% of the households in the project area were analyzed to be at the acceptable stage (with acceptable FCS >35) in terms of food security level, while the food utilization by households using their HDDS, respondents in the project area were low dietary diverse in their consumption as 61.8% have HDDS of between 1-4, only about 5.3% of the household had the highest HDDS of 9-12 and 32.9% of the household had medium diversity score of 5-8. The most practiced coping strategies were relying on less preferred foods (5.61%), purchasing food on credit (5.61%), restricting consumption by adult (3.3%), borrow food/relying on help (2.64%) and reduced volume at meal times (2.31%) among others. The study concludes that there is high rate of adoption of innovations which has affected yield and food security of the beneficiaries, however households in the project had low HDDS value, it is recommended that capacity building on food fortification and utilization be given to beneficiary farmers in the project area.