1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The World Bank (2000) defines poverty as a "multidimensional phenomenon, encompassing inability to satisfy basic needs, lack control, poor health, malnutrition, lack of shelter, poor access to water and sanitation, vulnerability to shocks, violence and crime, lack of political freedom.

The food and Agriculture organization Aof united Nation (FOA) defines food security as "access by all people at all times to food needed for a Healthy and active life" (FAO 2000). However, achieving food security necessitates that food be available on a regular basis and that all those people in need of it can obtain it. According to FAO, chronic under nutrition and food insecurity are principally caused by a combination of factors such as low agricultural productivity, high seasonal and year to year variability in food supplies and lack of off-farm employment opportunities.

The issue of poverty alleviation is recently emerging as a major subject of concern in national and international policy discourse. However, the intensity of poverty in less developing countries is more severe than that of the developed countries. Poverty is seen as a problem of economic development in less developing countries while growth is perceived to be the problems of developed countries.

The magnitude and extent of poverty in any country depend on two factors: the average level of National income and the degree of inequality in its distribution. Clearly, for any given level of National per capita income, the more unequal the distribution, the greater the incidence of poverty. Similarly, for any given distribution, the lower the average income level, the greater the incidence of poverty.

During the 1970s, the interest in poverty increases development economists took first step in measuring its magnitude, within and across countries by attempting to establish a common poverty line. They went even further and devised the widely used concept of absolute poverty. It is meant to represent a specific minimum level of income needed to satisfy the basic physical need of food, clothing, shelter, in order to ensure continued survival.

In addition to struggling on low income many people in developing nations fight a constant battle against malnutrition disease and ill health. Although there have been significant improvements since the 1960s, in the least developed countries of the world, life expectancy in 1998 still averaged only 48 years, compared to 63 years among other developing countries and 75 years in developed nations.

In the 1990s, the situation continues to deteriorate in sub-Saharan African with deep declinesin food consumption and widespread famine in both Asia and Africa, over 60 percent of the population barely met minimum calorie requirements necessary to maintain adequate health, moreover, it has been estimated that the calorine deficit amounted to less than a 2 percent of the world cereal production. This contradicts the widely held view that malnutrition is inevitable result of imbalance between World populations and world food supplies. The mores likely explanation can be found in the world income distribution. Thus malnutrition and poor health in the developing world are perhaps even more a matter of food production, even though, the two factors are indirectly interrelated.

The basic reason for the concentration of people and production in agricultural and other primary production activities in developing countries is a simple fact at low income levels, the first priorities of any person are food, clothing and shelter. Agricultural productivity is low not only because of large numbers of people in relation to available land but also LDCagricultural is often characterized by primitive technologies, poor organization and limited physical and human capital inputs. Technological backwardness persists because developing country agriculture is predominantly non-commercial peasant farming. It is no wonder that efforts to improve efficiency of agricultural production and increase the yields of rice, wheat, maize, (corn), soya beans, and millet are now and will continue to be top priority development objectives.

1.1 PROBLEM ANALYSIS

Food security, a means of poverty alleviation efforts in Nigeria is sustained through local initiation as well as international assistance. There are however, several obstacles to the effective implementation of the strategies. Some of the obstacles hunges from the fact that many of the strategy were either not well designed, formulated or implementation in a co-ordinate manner, most of the poverty reduction strategies have relied solely on government subvention for their operation resulting in financial problem during the period of decline in government revenue, discontinuity and other bureaucratic decent.

The strategies also fail as a result of inconsistency, corruption of government officials and public servants, poor target mechanism and failure to focus directly on the poor and thereby reducing poverty.