Factors Affecting Niger Food Security:an Analysis At National And Household Levels

Maintaining food security at country and household levels is still a major challenge for many developing countries. Niger is among those countries which major challenge is food insecurity. This present study tries to examine the factors affecting food security in Niger. First, we explored trends in Niger agricultural production and domestic grain demand. Domestic grain production has experienced only an annual compound growth of2percent while population continues to grow at an annual rate of3.3percent during the period between1980and2010. In the same period, net grain production exceeded demand only in7years. When we look at the self-sufficiency ratios of major crops, Niger has ability to supply its population needs through its own domestic production millet and sorghum up to100%.While Niger depends on import for rice, wheat and maize and this reliance increased sharply in recent years. We then investigated the relationship between Niger domestic crop production, food import and food aid using co-integration and vector error correction approaches. In the short-run, we found that production has significant negative impact on food aid. Similarly, food aid is found to have a positive effect on food import and statistically significant at1%level. The causality analysis found that there is unidirectional causality running from production to food aid flow and to food import. Low production periods are generally followed by high food aid inflows which resulted in high food import. In the second essay, we investigated the spatial integration in Niger domestic cereal markets using monthly retail prices of four staple crops consumed daily in the country. We used co-integration techniques to analyze the price relationship between six main markets. The results revealed high co-integration in Millet and Maize market pairs. On the Contrary, the study indicates also high absence of co-integration in most of Rice and Sorghum markets. In the third essay, we examined the relationship between Niger domestic cereal prices and international prices using monthly wholesale prices. Co-integration and Error Correction Models were employed to analyze the degree of price transmission. The results showed that cereal markets in Niger respond to negative and positive shocks in regional and international markets differently. Nigeria, Burkina-Faso, Mali, Togo and Vietnam markets have shown significant transmission in Niger markets. Maize and rice markets have high speed of adjustments to world prices compared to millet and sorghum markets. In the final essay, we carried out a case study to investigate the factors causing food insecurity and the coping strategies adopted by households to mitigate the effects of the shocks. The study revealed high prevalence of food insecurity in the study area. Drought, high food prices, poverty, soil infertility, disease and insect attacks are reported by the respondents to be the main causes of food insecurity. Migration, sales of livestock and consumption of less preferred food are coping strategies adopted by the majority of household members when facing food insecurity. The empirical results show that the gender of the head of household, diseases and pests, labor supply, flooding, poverty, access to market, the distance away from the main road and food aid are significant factors influencing odds ratio of household enough daily ration. The Choice of diverse coping mechanisms is significantly influenced negatively and positively by the socio-economic characteristics of the households. From these findings, we can conclude that the major factors affecting food security at national level are low agricultural productivity and low food import capacity. High world food prices are transmitted to Niger domestic food prices and can affect the household purchasing power and food access especially for the most vulnerable ones. The study revealed that Niger domestic grain markets are not well integrated. This affects the co-movement or transmission of prices across geographic space which is necessary to dilute shocks. The case study provides evidence that food insecurity continues to affect Nigerien population and the development of the country. Therefore proper food security strategies are needed to enhance food availability at national level and household access to food. This can only be achieved through increases in agricultural productivity as well as through policies that will raise household income.