Effect of poverty level and food insecurity status on poultry farmers' response to high feed costs in south-west Nigeria

The rising cost of feed is a major challenge in Nigeria’s poultry industry. It impacts production costs and threatens the industry's sustainability and food security. Implementing effective coping strategies for rising feed costs is crucial for poultry enterprises. This study examines poverty level, food insecurity status, and poultry farmers’ coping strategies to high feed costs in South-West, Nigeria. A multistage sampling procedure was employed for this study. Three states (Lagos, Ogun, and Oyo) were purposively selected from the six states in the South-West of Nigeria. In the second stage, 575 poultry farmers from all Poultry Association of Nigeria zones were selected using a simple random sampling technique. Data on the production activities of poultry farms were collected from the farmers using a structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean per capita household expenditure, household food insecurity access scale, double log regression, multinomial logistic regression, and stochastic frontier production models at p< 0.05. The results of data analysis showed that 48% of the poultry farmers adopted mixed farming to cope with the rising feed cost while 24.7%, 16.1% and 6.2% adopted the use of finished feed, downsizing their flock size and at the verge of exiting the venture, respectively, while 5.2% did not change strategy. At a poverty line of ₦48,500/year, 70.7% of the poultry farmers were poor. The results also indicated that 25.8% of the poultry farmers were food secure, 1.6%, 27.2% and 45.4% were mildly, moderately and severely food insecure, respectively. The multinomial logit analysis results showed that sex (p<0.1), age (p<0.05), education (p<0.01), farm size (p<0.05), food security status (p<0.01), and access to credit (p<0.01) were factors for coping with rising feed costs in South-west Nigeria. The study concludes that the more educated the poultry farmers are the likely they will adopt the most suitable strategies to reduce the effect of rising feed costs. The study recommends that poultry farmers should engage in mixed farming which enables them to be in production. Key words: Adopted strategies, Food security, Poverty level, Poultry farmers, Feed costs