Resilience Through Nutrition Business for Mitigating Economic Challenges and Promoting National Development
Chapter One
Objective of the Study
This study aims to explore the pivotal role of food security in poverty alleviation within Ehime Mbano, with specific objectives:
- To assess the impact of farmer awareness of food security strategies on poverty levels.
- To evaluate the effectiveness of food security initiatives in alleviating poverty among farmers.
- To identify key constraints hindering the effective use of food security strategies in poverty alleviation.
- To analyze successful strategies employed in utilizing food security measures to alleviate poverty among farmers in Ehime Mbano.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Theoretical Framework
Poverty is a serious problem which requires a lot of approaches and solutions. Social scientists use a lot of theories in explaining the incidence of poverty. The theoretical framework adopted for this study was the minority group theory developed by Rowntree and the functionalist theory of poverty developed by Talcott Parsons, Kingsly Davis and W.E. Moore between 1940 and 1945. The minority group theory point out that poverty may come up as a result of the death, incapacity or loss of work by family wage earners as well as largeness of family and lowness of wage. On the other hand, the functionalist theory of poverty states that all societies are made up many positions and statuses. It also states that poverty performs a number of functions in the society among which is that it stimulates the development of charitable and philanthropic activities. Similarly, material reward and prestige motivate people to occupy certain positions in the society. These theories are taken to be appropriate for the study because it is obvious that the causes of poverty identified by the minority group theory are visible in Ehime Mbano. Similarly, it is the importance of poverty that made the government to see the necessity of setting up poverty alleviation strategies among which is the Imo State Food security. Therefore, to improve on people‟s personalities and accord respect to themselves, it is expected that poverty will stimulate our youth to welcome poverty alleviation through agricultural strategies.
Poverty
The World Bank (1999) defined poverty as inability to achieve a minimum standard of living. In economic terms poverty is situation of low income or low consumption. This view is analytically useful for construction of poverty line. The value of income or consumption necessary to purchase the minimum standard of nutrition and other necessities does not tell poverty in real terms. Poverty has both income and non–income dimensions usually interwoven. In this regard, poverty refer to lack of physical necessities, assets and income. It includes more than being income poor.
Chambers (1995) said poverty is a general condition of deprivation vulnerability, seasonality, powerlessness and humiliation. From the ongoing, one begins to appreciate that there is the social dimension of poverty and this explain the insufficiency of growth rate as a sufficient measure of development. Income (material) poverty has been quantitatively analyzed and classified variously as – structural/transient and absolute/relative, (Afonja and Ogwumike, 2003). Social dimension of poverty analyzed through qualitative approach is more realistic and recently more in use. The qualitative approach defined poverty so as to capture the process and interactions between social, cultural, political and economic affairs. It includes a wider range of factors such as vulnerability. Isolation, powerlessness, survival, personal dignity, security, self respect, basic need and ownership of assets than does the definition of poverty under quantitative approach (Carvelho and White, 1997).
Oladoja (2002) remarked that although the meaning of poverty is well known, the exact description has been difficult. The definition often depends on the perception of the person analyzing the subject. From whatever angle one looks at it, the fact remains that poverty is undesirable; it is an economic and social malaise and a ravage phenomena that must be tackled.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The study used descriptive survey research design survey research involves a clear definition of the problem, collection of relevant and adequate data, careful analysis and interpretation of the data and skillful or professional reporting of the findings.
Population for the Study
The population for the study comprised of all the youths in Ehime Mbano aged 15-34 years. This was made up of 979,638 males, 831,974 females, and a total of 1,811,612.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND DATA ANALYSIS
Analysis of Socio-demographic data
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary
This study was carried out to find out the role of food security on poverty alleviation among Youths, in Ehime Mbano. The study had five specific objective which aimed at determining the extent of Youths awareness of food security Strategy role toward poverty alleviation among Youths, the constraints of food security strategy on poverty alleviation. Also identify appropriate measures to be implore, and the effective strategies for improve accessibility of the strategy to Youth to achieved poverty alleviant. Five research questions were answered and five null hypotheses were also tested. The survey research design was adopted for the study and a designed four point rating scale questionnaire was used to collect the data. The population of the study was 1,811,612 consisting of both male and female Youths in Ehime Mbano. A sample of six hundred (600) respondents were selected for the study. The data collected were analyzed using statistical tools. Percentage were used to analyze the demographic variables of the respondents while research questions were answered using mean scores.
Any questionnaire item with a mean score of 2.50 or above was accepted, otherwise, rejected. Similarly, the null hypotheses two was tested using t-test and it the result showed that the null hypothesis was rejected. Furthermore, the null hypotheses one, three, four and five were tested using ANOVA and the result showed that all the four null hypotheses were also rejected. Finally, the findings of the study revealed that Food security had not play any significance role in poverty alleviation among the Youths in Ehime Mbano.
Conclusion
On the bases of the result of the findings, the researcher concluded that;
food security is not having serious influence on poverty alleviation among young farmers as type of strategy effort constraint, strategies and major taking to improved access to the strategy as most of the indices are having weak influence. The implication here is that most of the strategy are not well implemented as they should be to reach the real target whose majority are young farmers.
Recommendations
Based on the findings from the study the following recommendation was made:
- Government should provide adequate funding for Imo State Food security strategy to make her achieve the strategy of poverty alleviation among Youths in the state.
- Efforts should be made to eliminate all identified constraints that prevented Youths from having effective access and awareness about food security programs
- Extension agents should be employed and deployed to all parts of the state to create awareness on the existence of Imo State Food security and its strategies that can create self-employment among the Youths.
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