Eighth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Nigeria is still characterized by high reliance on food imports. Malnutrition is widespread in the entire country and rural areas are especially vulnerable to chronic food shortages, malnutrition, unbalanced nutrition, erratic food supply, poor quality foods, high food costs, and even total lack of food.The problem of food and nutrition security in Nigeria has not been adequately and critically analyzed, despite various approaches at addressing the challenge. The enormous amount of money spent in attempting to assure the food security of Nigerians without success calls for a fundamental review of the past approaches and achievements to see what lessons can be learned to re-strategize and develop an approach that will ensure that better progress is made toward achieving a progressive Goal,the main objective of this knowledge review was to collect and summarize available secondary literature on food and nutrition security in rural Nigeria. The framework for the analysis of food and nutrition security details the factors responsible for low consumption of food and resulting malnutrition.Fundamentally, we find that food insecurity and malnutrition in rural areas of Nigeria result from non implementation or faulty implementation of the National Food and Nutrition Policy and National Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition. Other reasons identified include unacceptably high levels of poverty in rural households, low priority for nutrition on the agenda of government, poor understanding by policymakers of the content of nutrition programs in relation to other sectors, poor infant and child feeding practices, inadequate access to healthy environment and health services.