Research
Food price volatility and household food security: Evidence from Nigeria
Food prices vary seasonally, particularly in areas with rainfed agricultural production and imperfect markets,
and are also subject to volatility arising from macroeconomic and climatic shocks, such as global supply shocks
and abrupt policy changes. The specific nature of these relationships remains a pressing empirical question,
particularly in contexts where food insecurity is prevalent, prices are subject to diverse sources of variation, and
governments are seeking policy options to reduce price volatility. We use panel data from Nigeria to investigate
the effects of non-seasonal food price volatility, in particular unexpected increases in prices, on household food
security. Accounting for substitution effects and focusing on both domestic and imported rice—key components
of the Nigerian diet—we find that imported rice price increases are damaging to both dietary diversity
(downward impact) and the food share of consumption expenditure (upward impact), while impacts of domestic
rice price volatility are ambiguous. We find differential effects by wealth status that vary across indicators of food
security: an increase in the price of imported rice increases food share more among poor households than rich
households, and decreases dietary diversity more among rich households than poor households. Our findings
point toward the importance of improving food security by mitigating the effects of global shocks on imported
food prices, and also highlight the data challenges and complexity involved in developing precise answers to
these important policy questions.
Rural development interventions funded by private agribusiness firms may positively or negatively affect
rural farmers’ welfare. A positive effect is that such interventions may provide farmers with market access.
The negative effect could be that such firms may be solely motivated by profit and may exploit the farmers.
In this paper, we explore the role of FrieslandCampina Dairy Development Programme, a multinational firm
with headquarters in Europe, in improving the welfare of rural dairy farmers in Nigeria. We use a two-wave
panel survey of 122 programme participants and 95 non-participants. We focus on two outcome measures
– annual dairy income and daily milk yield – and use a pooled ordinary least squares method to understand
the programme effect. We also explore the mechanism of effect by assessing the programme effects
on farmers’ sustainable dairy management practices using a negative binomial regression method. Our results
suggest that the programme has positive welfare effects on farmers. We attribute these effects to farmers’
access to reliable markets offered by the programme and the informal business arrangement between
the farmers and the agribusiness firm. Potential policy implications include that governments should
encourage other private agribusiness firms to set up similar development programmes.
Economic Shocks and Welfare of Nigerian Households
Economic shocks continue to threaten the sustenance of households in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and various policies have been targeted to address the effects of economic shocks on households. However, households are faced with different types of shocks, and it is important to explore the combined effects of these shocks to understand the shock that poses the largest threat to household sustenance. Hence, we explore the effects of agricultural, financial, weather, health, and other shocks on Nigerian household welfare. We employ the World Bank’s Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) for Nigeria and use pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) and random effect models to understand this relationship. We find that agricultural and weather shocks negatively affect household welfare status. We, therefore, recommend that policies should be specifically targeted at mitigating the effects of these two shock categories.
Letters on Urgent Issues: Hungry Birds Do Not Sing: Coronavirus and the School Feeding Program. World Development
Since March 2020, when governments around the world announced the closure of schools and businesses to curb the spread of coronavirus, policy-makers in SSA have been seeking ways to mitigate the impact of the lockdown on the social welfare of children. While remote learning methods are being used to maintain the learning outcomes of children, there is a growing concern about how to maintain nutrition outcomes of children that previously had access to school meals through the school feeding program. In this article, I explain how the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the limitations of the school feeding program and offer a supplementary approach to the program, focusing on the nutritional needs of children all year round.
In progress:
- Socioemotional skills and youth engagement in agricultural businesses
- Digital literacy, rural output market and demand for rural e-commerce
- Gendered effects of climate shocks and crop diversification on household food security status
- Covid-19 shocks, social protection, and food insecurity in Nigeria
- Rural Households’ Enrolment in Digital Identification and Payment Systems
You can find some of my other research here
Teaching
Current
AEF 201 – Introduction to Microeconomics (Undergraduate)
AEF 508 – Econometrics (Undergraduate)
AEF 519 – Agricultural Project Appraisal and Implementation (Undergraduate)
AEF 801 – Microeconomics Theory (Graduate)
AEF 807 – Introduction to Quantitative Research Techniques (Graduate)
AEF 903 – Advanced Econometrics (Graduate)
Previous
AEF 204 – Mathematics and Statistics for Students of Agriculture (Undergraduate)
AEF 512 – Agribusiness Management (Undergraduate)
AEF 518 – Agricultural Development and Policy (Undergraduate)
AEF 526 – Introduction to Research Methods (Undergraduate)
AEF 810 – Agricultural Production Economics (Graduate)