Agriculture In Nigeria

Growth in agriculture is therefore not only associated with an increase in farm incomes, it also stimulates linkages with the non-farm economy, causing economic growth and rapid poverty reduction (Osei-Akoto et al., 2013). Otherwise, in countries where agriculture has failed or lagged behind other sectors, hunger is definitely inescapable. Incidentally, this has been the bane of most African countries economies as poor health reduces farmer’s ability to innovate, experiment, and operationalize changes in agricultural systems (Asenso-Okyere et al., 2010). Serious health conditions result in catastrophic expenditures which may also end in depletion of productive assets such as sale of draught animals and sale of cultivable land (Slater and Wiggins,

It also serves as their main source of income and livelihood. Agriculture has been identified as a panacea to the economic quagmire that Nigeria and other countries of the world have found themselves. Basically, the role of agriculture is developmental in nature : it is concerned with strengthening ability of farmers and farming communities to produce and market agricultural goods in order to sustainably generate both food and income (Agulanna et al., 2013).Although agriculture has made notable progress in the past decades, not much progress has been made in improving the nutrition ,food utilization and health of poor farmers especially in developing countries (Asenso-Okyere et al., 2009).While agriculture strongly have the potential to be a powerful driver of reductions in under nutrition and ill-health, the sector is currently not realizing this potential ( Gillespie et al., 2013; Ruel et al., 2013;Balagamwala and Gazdar, 2013; Kadiyala et al.,

This is evidenced in the inability of Majority of farmers in Nigeria to achieve high levels of outputs in spite of improved technologies developed over the past few decades (Adeyeye, 1989). Okuneye (2002), opined that despite the increase in production of staple food in Nigeria, majority of the citizens, most especially the rural Nigerians, are still not nutrition-secure. Oni et al. (2011) reported that with an annual growth of 2.5% in food production in Nigeria, food insecurity at the national and household level remain dismal and on the increase from 18% in 1986 to 40% in 2005.They added that the resultant effect of these are problems of malnutrition and ill-health .Thus, the need for this study to examine food utilization, nutrition and health status of rural Southwest Nigeria farmers is important.

Rural households are responsible for half of the world’s food production and produce between 60 and 80% of the food in most developing countries depending on the region, (CTA, 1999). Despite their effort and active participation in food production, 30% of people in Africa are malnourished as at 2010 and over 40% of Nigerians are food