Effects of Tenure and Land Use Factors on Food Security Among Rural Households in the Dry Savannas of Nigeria (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Agriculture has been a major contributor to Nigeria's economy for several decades, as it provides food for the people, raw materials for the agro-allied industries and earns foreign exchange for the economy [1,2]. However, rising population and industrialization have increased the pressure on land resulting in reduced farm outputs that is not sufficient to meet national food demand. The farming households also have to cope with food supply shortages, inefficient storage facilities, price fluctuations, and resource limitations for their farm production operations. This further creates gaps in resource availability among the poor. The impact of this is far-reaching in that the food situation gets worse; farms are being abandoned to the elderly or for off-farm jobs, while the income from off-farm activities is not enough to meet household needs [3,4,5]. This situation calls for guided change. Concern over the food security situation in sub-Saharan Africa as indicated in the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce the number of the food insecure by half by 2015. Given that land plays an important role in the livelihoods of the majority of rural households, food security and poverty reduction cannot be achieved unless issues of access to land, security of tenure and the capacity to use land productively and in a sustainable manner are addressed. IFPRI's report on Vision 2020 pointed out that food security solution that fails to address natural resource issues effectively would not be sustainable.