ABSTRACT
Research background: In Nigeria's local food system, staple foods, animal sourced foods, perishable foods such as fruits, and vegetables are important food products that are produced processed stored, transported and traded mostly by smallholder participants in the supply chain. COVID-19 pandemic compounds system's shock through the negative impact on health, employment and income. Food security and nutrition are outcomes of a food system linked to the interrelated interaction of the food supply chain, consumer behaviour and the food environment - biophysical, physical, economic, political, social cultural factors, opportunities and conditions. Strengthening the resilience capacity of participants have been ad hoc given the paucity of data necessary for targeted policy intervention. Purpose of the article: The paper examines the pattern of food insecurity of smallholder participants, the dynamics of their food insecurity and the role of resilience capacity.
ABSTRACT
Literature documents a correspondence between production of risk and the management of risk in a local context. Quantifying the relative importance of resilience indicators is therefore at a premium in policy circles. We propose a practical methodology for estimating the ex-ante resilience capacity of farm households. We propose an index of resilience capacity that can be estimated at the household level. The composite index is constructed from indicators sourced from Nigeria's COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) data set. 3,000 households were selected from the frame of 4,934 households with contact details. Various household welfare indicators were analyzed using the factor component analysis and the generalized family of distance measures used for household ranking. The estimated Resilience Capacity Index (RCI) of a mean distance of 5 points and a +-1.5 standard deviation revealed a moderate farm households resilience capacity. Taken as a whole, the results from this study show that programs that build on absorptive, adaptive and transformation capacities will go a long way to strengthen the ability of agricultural households to recover from a pandemic shock. Based on these findings, the research highlights the need for development actors interested in promoting resilience in Nigeria to increase investments in strengthening access to essential services and functions like electricity, quality housing and livelihood strategies. Notwithstanding some of the analytical limitation, the essentials of resilience capacity framework have been advanced to motivate further research.
ABSTRACT
This study examined the adaptation strategies to the consequence of COVID-19 pandemic on Poultry Farmers in Oyo State. Multistage sampling procedure was employed to select five Key Informants and five Focus Group Discussion from the respondents respectively. Data on effects of lockdown, coping strategies and role of PAN were collected and analysed using constant comparison analysis. The effects of pandemic in severity order include, poor marketing due to collapse of the standard delivery system (85%);glut of the poultry products (80%), laying stock reduction (25%)and folding up of the enterprise (15%) burying of unsold bad eggs (5%). Coping strategies employed were sourcing financial support from cooperative societies (85%), sold produce on credit (75%) and sourcing ICT-based marketing information (70%). The role played by PAN include taking exemption letter from Police (Police wireless message) to move poultry products for sale;mediating unfavourable government taxation and relevant information dissemination via WhatsApp group platform. There is the need to develop an emergency's-smart resilience programme for the poultry industry. Measures adopted to manage emergencies such as COVID-19 should not impede the flow of agricultural products and inputs from the onset.