MEASURES OF ENHANCING FOOD SECURITY AMONG HOUSEHOLDS IN EDO CENTRAL SENATORIAL DISTRICT

This paper is aimed at examining the enhancement of food security among households in Edo Central Senatorial District. The study examines the measure used by households in enhancing food security. A descriptive survey design was adopted in this study, using a population of about 664,059 households, with a sample size of 300 households using multi-stage sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was a questionnaire. A mean score of 2.5 was used as the benchmark rating score for decision rule. The t-test for two independent sample means was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The result showed that poverty, lack of food preservation knowledge, lack of food and nutrition knowledge, low morale towards the practice of agriculture and lack of facilities for food preservation such as refrigerators and deep freezers are the factors responsible for food insecurity amongst households in Edo Central Senatorial District. To reduce food shortage and promote food security, the measures commonly used among households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District include: food preservation and bulk purchasing. The use of these food security measures varies with the size of household. It was recommended that large households should endeavour to practice crop farming and animal rearing such as poultry farming for family subsistence.


INTRODUCTION
Food is a basic need for humans. It is eaten by living things to provide energy and nutrition. It contains the nutrition that is needed to be healthy. Food is any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink and plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth. Anyakoha (2010) defines food as any liquid or solid material which when eaten and digested can provide the body with nourishment.
Food contains proteins, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and water, these food substances are known as food nutrients. Nutrients are substances that provide energy for activity, growth and all functions of the body such as breathing, digesting food, keeping warm, materials for the growth and repair of the body, and for keeping the immune system healthy. Food usually comes from animals or plants. It contains the nutrients that people and animals needs to be healthy. The consumption of food is enjoyable to humans. Food therapy is emerging as the latest prevention against multiple lifestyle diseases. Experts now believe "it is better to pop an apple, rather than popping a pill". Eating good food especially with the family and friends, is one of the pleasures of life. The importance of food makes families, states and nations to devise measures of enhancing its security. Measures as used in this study is defined by advanced English Dictionary as any maneuver made as part of progress towards a goal. It also means a plan or course of action taken to achieve a particular purpose. Enhancing by Oxford dictionary means to increase, intensify or further improve the quality, value or extent of. Food security is the access by all people at all times to the food needed for a healthy life. In enhancing food security, measures adopted according to literature are: Practice of family agriculture like gardening, subsistence agriculture; Food storage; Food preservation e.g. roasting; refrigeration, and drying; Bulk purchasing of foods and fruits when in season; Rearing of animals like birds, pigs, goats and others; Reducing food waste; and work towards defeating climate change. Despite all these measures, some individuals or families are hungry and not feeding adequately and therefore are likely to have impaired physical and cognitive abilities of children, poor health status, children falling sick more often, with higher rates of iron deficiency anemia, and also results in children being frequently hospitalized. This brings about food insecurity. Food insecurity is the lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life [United State Department of Agriculture (USDA, 2011 andBremner, 2012). According to World Food Summit, 1996, Food security "exist when people at all-time have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary need and food preferences for an active and healthy life". From the definition, four components of food security are identifiable: Availability, Accessibility, Utilization, and stability of food. Based on the practical guide of food security information for Action, all four components must be satisfied simultaneously to meet the objectives of food security. Food and agricultural Organization (FAO) (2008) and Simon (2012), stated that the four components can be delineated a follows: availability, accessibility, utilization and sustainability.
These components of availability, accessibility, utilization and sustainability embrace the supply demand and adequacy of food at all times. Wikipedia on line encyclopedia defines food security as a measure of the availability of food and individuals ability to access it. The causes of food insecurity are population growth, changing tastes, climate changes and troubled farmers. A person who has adequate access to quality food today is still considered food insecure if he has periodic inadequate access to food which may cause his nutritional level to deteriorate. Variation in weather conditions, political and economic instability and price fluctuations are some factors that may impact on food security status. Food security sits on the top of the list of targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS). Though over 60 countries made great success in their effort to meet the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) hunger target of halving the population between 1990 and 2015, food security has remained one of the greatest challenges of most household in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bremner, 2012). Food insecurity continues to threaten larger proportions of households in developing countries. The problem of food insecurity is not just limited to Africa alone, rather it is a worldwide phenomenon just as there have been food crises in such African countries as Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon and Egypt, cases have also been recorded in such non-African countries as Indonesia, Peru and most recently Haiti. This shows that food insecurity and the resultant food crises is not peculiar to Africa alone but is most prevalent in most Less Developed Countries (LDCs) all around the world thereby making it a developmental problem (USAID, 2011).
A household as defined by Cambridge dictionary is a group of people often a family who live together. They include people living in your house, including servants. Household food security is the application of the four components of food security (availability, accessibility, utilization and stability) at the family level with individuals within these households as the focus of concern. Household food security exists when all the people living in the household have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all times that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (Bremner, 2012). Food security at household level is a subset of the national level and it requires that all individuals and households have access to sufficient food either by producing it themselves or by generating sufficient income to demand for it. Two main factors that determine food security are supply side factors and demand side factors. The supply side factors are those that determine food supply or food availability while the demand side factors on the other hand are factors that determine the degree of access of countries, households and individuals to available food. (Onunka, Ihemezie & Olumba, 2018). In Edo Central Senatorial District, it is common to see people trooping to the market every market day which is usually between 5days. The people are seen patronizing food Vendors and one begin to wonder why people are always buying food stuffs every market days. Furthermore, it has been observed that the practice of small scale farming is a common practice among indigenes. This involves planting food crops like vegetables, cereal and tuber crops for family subsistence. In some other homes, animals such as birds, goats and rabbits are reared for consumption and sale as a means of livelihood. This is common to many inhabitants of Edo Central Senatorial District. Hence, the need in investigating how families in Edo Central Senatorial District enhance their food security.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Nigeria prides itself as the giant of African with its economy becoming the largest in 2014; yet, the poverty rate in the country is alarming. It is common to see households or families not being able to feed. In cases where some families try to feed its members, the meals are not adequate resulting in food insecurity. Household food insecurity can be referred to as the inability to provide enough food for a healthy and active lifestyle for all household members. In Edo Central Senatorial District, the availability, accessibility, utilization and sustainability of food seems to be a problem among households. A major observation of the researcher that suggest that food availability, accessibility, utilization and sustainability constitute a challenge among household is as follows. The researcher has observed that many school children from public primary and secondary hardly have breakfast before coming to school while the few that are given breakfast to school are largely carbohydrate (starchy) based stable foods such as rice and eba. This explains that there is heavy calorie deficiency in the food intake of children from various households as nutritious and vitamin rich meals such as fruits and vegetables, are largely ignored in most households. Also, it is common knowledge from the researcher's observation that many home buy more of starchy foods that are relatively cheaper and more in quantity to cater for members of their households. Aside, the financial inability to buy more nutritious food items and change diet for members of their households, many households compromise quality and costly diet for quantity and cheaper food items without considering the nutritional implication of what the members of their households on a day to day basis. This largely suggest some threats to foods security as quality and nutritious food may be poorly available, accessible and utilized at the households level in the state. This study is an attempt to fill the gap on how to enhance food security among households in Edo Central Senatorial District.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The following research questions were raised to guide the study: 1.
What are the factors responsible for food insecurity amongst households in Edo Central Senatorial District?

2.
What are the measures adopted by households in enhancing food security in Edo Central Senatorial District?

3.
Is there any difference in the measures used by small and large households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District?

NULL HYPOTHESIS
There is no significant difference in the measures used by small and large households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District

METHODOLOGY
The descriptive survey design was adopted in this study. This design was considered appropriate because the researcher sought to present a vivid description of the data collected from respondents without manipulating the variables under any controlled laboratory condition. The population of this study covers over 664,059 households in Edo Central Senatorial Area which represent 2% of the entire population (National Population Commission, 2019). A sample size of 300 households (respondents) was randomly drawn for the study using multi-stage sampling technique. The multistage sampling technique was adopted because the sampling progressed through series of stage using various sampling techniques: purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques. In the first stage, the purposive sampling technique was adopted to select Edo Central Senatorial District which comprises of five local government areas namely: Esan Central, Esan West, Esan South East, Esan North East, and Igueben. The choice of Edo Central Senatorial District was informed by the proximity of the area and prior knowledge of the researcher about the terrain. In the second stage, the lottery method of the simple random sampling technique was used to select three towns per local government area. In accomplishing this, a systematic sampling technique was used to draw 20 households from each of the target towns/villages selected in the local government. This technique was employed to draw a targeted number of households of various sizes and income status. The sampling procedure is properly explained in Table 1.  1-3); food preservation (items 4-6); bulk purchasing (items 7-9); and backyard farming for crop production (items 10-12). The instrument was rated on a four point likert scale of Strongly Agreed -4, Agree -3, Disagreed -2 and Strongly Disagreed -1.The content validity of the instrument was carried out by experts. The split-half reliability alpha (α) of 0.78 was obtained on the instrument; depicting that the instrument was reliability for administration. The administration of the instrument was done by the researcher with the help of five research assistants. Data for this study were collected by the researcher personally to enhance the return rate. During data collation from the field, a total of 293 copies of the questionnaire was correctly filled and used for the analysis. This gave a total of 97.6 percent return and use rate. The research questions were analyzed using the mean and standard deviation (S.D). A mean score of 2.5 (average of the 4 likert scale, i.e (4+3+3+1) ÷4 = 2.5) was used as the benchmark rating score for decision rule on the items. The t-test for two independent sample means was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.

RESULTS AND DATA ANALYSIS
The result of the research question one and test of hypothesis are presented as follows Research Question 1: What are the factors responsible for food insecurity amongst households in Edo Central Senatorial District? The results in Table 1 showed that the respondents practiced on item 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 at a mean score range of 2.52 and 2.68 and disagreed on items 4 and 5 at mean score of 2.32 and 2.40 respectively. Hence, this implies that lack of finance/poverty, lack of food preservation knowledge, lack of food and nutrition knowledge, low morale towards the practice of agriculture and lack of facilities for food preservation such as refrigerators and deep freezers are the factors responsible for food insecurity amongst households in Edo Central Senatorial District. Research Question 2: What measures are used by households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District? The results in Table 2 showed that the respondents practice on item 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 at mean score range of 2.53to 2.65 and do not practice on items1, 2, 3, 4, 11 and 12 at mean score of 2.32 and 2.42 respectively. The results in the table further showed that the overall mean score on items 1 to 3 bordering on household animal farm for subsistence was 2.40; items 4 to 6 that constitute items on food preservation had an overall mean score of 2.58, items 7 to 9 on Bulk purchasing was 2.59, while items 10 to 12 bordering on backyard farming for crop production had a mean score of 2.49. Since the mean perception score on food preservation (2.58) and bulk purchasing (2.59) were greater than the criterion mean (2.50). Hence, this implies that the measures used by heads of households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District include: food preservation and bulk purchasing Hypothesis 1: There is no significant difference in the measures used by small and large households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District.  Table 3 showed that the calculated tvalues of 0.757 for household animal farm for subsistence, -1.359 for food preservation and -0.736 for Backyard farming for crop production and are not statistically significant (p>0.05). While -2.333 for bulk purchasing is statistically significant (p<0.05).This indicates that bulk purchasing is one of the measures used by small and large households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District. This further explains that household animal farm for subsistence, food preservation and back yard farming for crop production are not used by small and large households in enhancing their food security in Edo Central Senatorial District.

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
The results show that lack of finance/poverty, lack of food preservation knowledge, lack of food and nutrition knowledge, low morale towards the practice of agriculture and lack of facilities for food preservation such as refrigerators and deep freezers are the factors responsible for food insecurity amongst households in Edo Central Senatorial District. These results agree with that of USAID (2011) who found that poor food storage and low morale of individuals to practice agriculture are some of the factors responsible for food insecurity and reducing food supply. The result also agrees with that of Uche and Uche (2017) who found that the factors affecting food security at the micro level include: poverty, low awareness on proper food preservation, ignorance/illiteracy, household size, personal cultural belief and waste/poor food management practices in Nigeria.
The result also corroborates that of Onunka, Ihemezie and Olumba (2018) who found that there epileptic state of power, low socioeconomic status of heads of household, unemployment, poor land tenure system for agriculture, increased housing demand that has reduced 78 ABHULIMEN, J., IDIALU, E. E. AND UWAMEIYE, B. E.