Analysis of Food Access Status among Farming Households in Southern Part of Gombe State, Nigeria

DOI: 10.15580/GJAS.2018.3.021018022 This study analyzed food access status among farming households in southern part of Gombe state, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 120 respondents from eight villages in the study area. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents. Most respondents (68.3 percent) were male and married with average household size of 7 persons. Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) developed by Food and Nutrition Assistance (FANTA) of the USAID (2004) was used to determine the status of the farming household food insecurity. The HFIAS score revealed that about 27 percent of the farming households were food secure, 35 percent mildly food insecure, 18.3 percent moderately food insecure and 20 percent were severely food insecure. A simple regression analysis showed that income positively and significantly (1%) contributed to household food security with an R of 0.6801 showing that income played an important role in achieving household food security among farming households. The study concludes that adequate resources to access food by food deficient households could significantly influence the status of food security among the rural households. It was recommended that additional sources of livelihood to include off-farm remunerative activities through skills acquisition and increased agricultural (onfarm) production by subsidizing inputs to be the option policy in achieving rural household food security. Submitted: 10/02/2018 Accepted: 19/02/2018 Published: 31/03/2018