Abstract:
Homestead farming is a method of food production that harnesses the potentials to produce food around the home of the farmer, thereby immensely contributing to the food security of the practicing households, by reducing the expenditure on food, conservation of income and utilization of resources such as land. The study examined the effect of homestead farming on food security in peri-urban households of Ondo state, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 180 respondents consisting ninety (90) homestead farming households and ninety (90) non-homestead farming households for the study. Data were collected from primary source using well-structured questionnaire and analyzed with descriptive statistics (frequency distribution tables, standard deviation, percentages and means). Likert rating scale, Krippendorf alpha test, probit model, propensity score matching, kernel matching, radius matching method, food security index, difference in difference analysis, correlation analysis and t-test. The results showed that homestead farming has benefits on the household food security status with a grand mean of 4.205. The PSM (NNM, KBM and RM) results indicated that the practice of homestead farming increases food security of respondents by 14.7 percentage points to 22.4 percent after treatment, depending on the matching technique considered. The Difference in Difference (DID) regression technique result showed that homestead farming practice has a net contribution of 11.5 % to homestead farming households.
The study concludes that the homestead farming households were much more food secured than households who did not practice homestead farming in the study area. Some of the constraints captured includes the theft of produce, land space availability for practicing, offensive odor from animal dungs etc, in other to encourage homestead farming practice and strengthen the effect of homestead food production in peri-urban households, the following recommendations were made: there is the need for homestead farming practitioners to come together and form cooperative societies, pooling resources together to make funds available for purchasing inputs, to subsidize cost incurred by members of their cooperative society. They should not just stop on procuring the inputs but go further to seek extension personnel counsel on using the input and thereby practically training all members with methods such as demonstration plot where they can see and have access. They should also monitor the progress of their members homestead production and promptly intervene such as providing veterinary services.
