Overview of Challenges of Agricultural Production and Food Security in Nigeria

Copyright © 2015 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: The issue of serious food and nutrition problem is now commonly associated with less developed countries. Food is understood as involving interconnected domains with questions of agriculture, socio-political, market and distribution, employment, ecological, roles of women and just to mention a few. It is surprising that most of the problems which international institutions like the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, Economic Commission for Africa, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, International Fund for Agricultural Development and governments of developed countries have to deal with supporting the developing countries in the last two decades have revolved around the inability of agricultural sector to provide adequate food and nutrition for their populations. Nigeria government has only been paying lips service to the issue of food security as it is evident in weak policy making in the area of agriculture. For Nigeria to achieve food security, different challenges like political, social, ecological/climate change, institutional weakness, the role of women in food production among others must be taken seriously. It is recommended that all the stakeholders in agriculture: policy makers, scientists, extension workers and farmers be brought together to discuss the challenges confronting food production/security and forage the way forward. Government should consider implementing the views o