A REVIEW OF URBAN AGRICULTURE AS A TOOL FOR BUILDING FOOD SECURITY IN NIGERIA: CHALLENGES AND POLICY OPTIONS

Over the years, various governments in Nigeria had adopted series of anti-poverty reforms aimed at ameliorating food insecurity but all to no avail. It has also been noted that, there exist a wide gap between food demand and food production due to the rural-urban drift (migration) primarily in search of white collar jobs. To checkmate the ugly trend of the food shortage in the country at large throws us to a new challenge which calls for urgent attention with a view to combating urban food shortage in terms of nutrition, human welfare and standard of living. Moreso, the increasing demand for food and jobs among urban dwellers has hitherto makes urban households to embark on urban agriculture as a means of filling the food demand and supply gap and providing income for other household requirements. Owing to the above facts, Urban Agriculture (UA) has become a contemporary issue, gaining prominence in the developing economies as a viable option to ameliorate food insecurity. Despite the growing awareness among the developed nations, Nigerian agricultural scientists and government policy have not really given it much attention it deserves as a tool for building community/urban food security which is a viable index for economic growth and development. This paper therefore reviews the concept of urban agriculture, types of urban farms, urban agriculture and poverty alleviation, UA and physical planning, potentialities, challenges and policy options on how to integrate UA into the city system for sustainability of food security situation in Nigeria. The study concluded that UA has the potentials of improving the food basket of the urban dwellers. It equally has the tendency to reduce food spoilage due to hours of traveling from rural to urban areas and the breakdown of vehicles due to bad state of Nigerian roads which often hike the cost of food transportation and eventually food prices in urban areas.