Agricultural Infrastructure and Food Security in Nigeria
This study sought to investigate the impact of agricultural infrastructure on food security in Nigeria. The study was informed by the acute shortage and rising prices of staple foodstuff in the country. The study considers the roles of agricultural professionals, technology use in agricultural practices, provision of social amenities in the rural communities and adequate security of life and property of rural farmers as determining factors of food production in Nigeria. It employed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and bounds testing co- integration approach to empirically examine the relationship between food production and agricultural infrastructure, using time series data obtained from World Development Indicators for the period of 1990 to 2022. The result of the analysis indicates the presence of significant co- integrating (long-run) relationship between food security, agricultural professionals, technology use in agricultural practices, provision of social amenities in the rural communities, and adequate security of life and property of rural farmers. The result also reveals that availability of agricultural professionals, provision of social amenities, technology use in agricultural practices and adequate security of life and property significantly influence food security positively in the long run. Also, agricultural professionals, provision of social amenities, and adequate security of life and property are also positive and significant in the short run, while technology use in agricultural practices is not. Agricultural infrastructure demonstrates an increasing function on food security in Nigeria. Therefore, increasing the number of agricultural professionals. improvement in security of life and properties, road transportation network and technology use in agriculture increases food production in the country. On the basis of the findings, it is necessary for the government to improve on agriculture infrastructure by ensuring increased number of agricultural professionals and social amenities, There is also need for increase in the use of technology in agriculture. The government should ensure that adequate security of life and property are provided for farmers in rural communities. These measures will definitely result in increase in food production in the country.