Agricultural Education as Catalyst for Activating Programmes, Acts and Policies for Enhancing Food Security in Nigeria
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020-02
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Education and Extension Services, Usmanu Dan-fodiyo University, Sokoto, Sokoto State
Abstract
A significant proportion of the world’s population is undernourished with about 26.8% of the
population in sub-Saharan Africa suffering from chronic malnutrition. The issue of food security has
been one of the major concerns of the twenty-first century. The paper adopted the literature review
approach to examine the contribution of agricultural education to food security in Nigeria as well as
the present and past government efforts at addressing food security. The paper also examines the
agricultural policies of past and present governments of Nigeria to address the issue of food insecurity.
Some of the policies acts and programmes include National Accelerated Food Production Programme
(NAFPP), Agricultural Development Projects (ADP) and National Home-Grown School Feeding
Programmes (NHGSFP) among others. The study recommended that government should boost
agricultural education through an increase in budgetary allocation, motivation and recruitment of
qualified personnel, and change of current status of agricultural science from elective to compulsory
while linkage between agricultural education and agricultural policies and programme and acts in
Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources should be ensured. The study, therefore, concluded that
food security can be attained through effective repositioning of agricultural education, to serve as
means of sensitizing the youths to government efforts in agriculture thereby catalyzing to boost
government agricultural programmes.
Description
Keywords
Food Security, Agricultural Education, Agricultural Policy