Spatial Assessment of Land Suitability Potential for Agriculture in Nigeria.

From land cover analysis, cropland expansion was a major driving factor for land use land cover changes in Nigeria from 2000 to 2020. This further highlights the food production needs in the country. While this land use change indicates a significant alteration in land cover, it was exigent to assess land suitability using a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) combined with geospatial techniques to identify areas with agricultural suitability potential and to analyze cropland suitability. The results showed that the country had 8% of very high suitability, high suitability (25%), moderate suitability (29%), and marginal suitability (25%) croplands. However, low suitability accounts for 14% of the entire cropland. The spatial distribution of cropland suitability shows that most areas in the South East, South South, and South West, respectively, have the most suitable cropland as they meet the biophysical conditions for crop production, followed by the North Central regions, while most places in the North (North East and North West) have a higher share of moderate to low suitability. This study highlights the potential of the country to target localized self-sufficiency. Therefore, this study recommends using the cropland suitability map to launch food security programs across the six geopolitical zones to maximize their inherent environmental potentials to alleviate the country's food production needs.

Changing Food Consumption Patterns and Land Requirements for Food in the Six Geopolitical Zones in Nigeria.

Research on food consumption in Nigeria has mainly focused on food intake, household diversity, and purchasing power. We investigated a knowledge gap for food consumed by households and the land requirements for food resulting from household consumption patterns. The food consumed and the household size determine the land requirement for food. Therefore, a quantity-based analysis and a land demand methodology were applied to derive household food quantity and land requirements for food respectively. The results show that a greater percentage of household income is spent on cereals and starchy roots as the main source of calories and that cowpea is a secondary food option for households. In addition, households are changing their dietary intake from rice to maize and rice to cassava and yams as a cheaper alternative and experts' measurements of food security at the household level indicates that households in our study are moderately food insecure. Other findings show that the country's specific and per capita land requirements for food have gradually increased between 2000 and 2018. Across the six geopolitical zones, Northern regions with higher populations have high land requirements for food, especially for rice and maize (cereals), while Southern regions have high land requirements for cassava and yams (starchy roots) due to their respective consumption and household sizes. In addition, from our study, the land requirements for food show the actual cropland area of South South fed 5000 households. Consequently, a scenario analysis shows that the land requirements for food in our study exceeds the entire geographical area of Nigeria. Therefore, continued population growth without improved living standards and adequate food production output per hectare will further exacerbate food insecurity and land shortage in Nigeria.

Smallholder Farmers Contribution to Food Production in Nigeria.

Several studies have shown that smallholder farmers produce most of the food in low-income and developing countries and form the backbone of the country's food supply. This study examines the extent these smallholder farmers in Nigeria can put the country on the path to self-sufficiency and ensure satiety for household food consumption through their local production. The study also examines food production and their resulting yield based on crop production and harvested area, as well as the percentage of crops produced for food or other purposes. The results show that production of rice, sorghum, soybean, cassava, and yam is low; and their corresponding yields are declining, with the exception of maize, although the harvested area increased from 2015 to 2018. As it is, the findings are a clear indication of inadequate per capita food supply due to low food production, especially for cereals. The study suggests closing the yield gap specifically for cereals, limiting post-harvest losses, and finding a sustainable balance between the uses of major food crops for animal feed to reduce pressure on land resource use. The different states production performance requires special attention to harness the agricultural potential of each geopolitical zone. Lastly, dry-season cultivation should be encouraged through irrigation to enable harvesting two-times in a year. The study offers useful approaches to assess the contribution of local farmers to the food supply of a growing population and provides suggestions for the government, stakeholders, and the international community willing to collaborate and invest in the agricultural sector.

Ecological balance emerges in implementing the water-energy-food security nexus in well-developed countries in Africa.

Although many African countries have made significant progress towards universal access to water, energy, and food resources (WEF), assessing the ecological response to the increasing productivity of these resources is not well researched, which carries the risk of ecological deficit, resource degradation, and inefficient policy responses to resource management. This study seeks to assess the ecological sustainability response to the high increase demand for WEF resources in well-developed African countries. The study developed new measurement metrics for the WEF production system, including three indicators of ecological footprint (EF), ecological biocapacity (EBC), and eco-balance. The overall analysis considers data from four distinct types of water and energy use activities, and eight distinct types of food consumption, in nine African countries with the highest WEF nexus performance. An evaluation tool for the Water, Energy, Food and Ecological Balance (WEFEB) nexus index is proposed as one of the study's outcomes. Despite having 100% access to WEF resources related to the SDG targets. The results reveal the significant levels of imbalance and large ecological deficits existing in many of the concerned countries, especially North Africa, Mauritius, and South Africa, which need to rethink their economic models. Projecting a sustained increase in resource demand so that each country achieves at least 1700 m3/capita/year as the minimum amount of water needed, most countries would suffer from a steady increase in ecological imbalance. According to the results, managing the ecological imbalances with increasing demand for WEF resources in well-developed African countries may require well-designed policies to effectively reduce certain types of human demand that have a large ecological footprint.