Library Dissertation Showcase

Attaining food security and sustainability in the agricultural value chain in Nigeria

  • Year of Publication:
  • 2022

Sustainability in all aspects of life has become critical to the survival of humans, animals, and the environment. More importantly, agricultural sustainability is critical for meeting current population food demand without jeopardizing future generations’ needs. Unfortunately, despite the UN’s stated goal of eradicating hunger by 2030, the world is still far from achieving food security, with approximately 690 million people suffering from hunger. Food insecurity and malnutrition are more prevalent in densely populated countries with limited planting technologies and investment, such as Nigeria. As such this dissertation was aimed at: understanding the forces driving sustainability in the Nigerian agrifood industry, identifying the challenges encountered by the major stakeholders and recommending sustainable practices for agriculturally advanced nations. This research was designed as a case study which adopted the systematic review approach using the PRISMA2020 framework. Nigeria was selected as the primary case study, however, South Africa and the Netherlands were selected as sustainability models for Nigeria. Twenty-one (21) studies on the agricultural value chain and practices from these study areas published between 2018 and 2022 were included in this review. Based on this systematic review, the major challenges to food security in Nigeria are: low food production, high incidence of food spoilage, farmer-herder conflicts, gender and income inequality, poor agricultural extension services, poor product marketability and poor knowledge on good agricultural practices. In light of this, it is advised that the Nigerian government develop agricultural initiatives geared at educating farmers on cutting-edge farming technologies. The adoption of the “collectives” strategy employed in the Netherlands is also strongly recommended as there is already great deal of distrust between the Nigerian government and agricultural value chain actors.

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