Impact of Cereals Production and Cross-border Trade on Food Security in Nigeria: A Time Series Analysis between 1986 and 2017

Abstract

This study aims to examine the impact of cereals production and cross-border trade on food security in Nigeria between 1986 and 2017. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric technique was employed to analyze the time series secondary data sourced from World Bank Development Indicators, 2017 in order to explain the relationship between food security and the cereal production and cross-border trade. The findings of this study reveal that both in short-run and long-run estimation of error correction model (ECM), cereal domestic production, cereal exports and cereal imports have significant impact on the food security. Accordingly, cereal domestic production and cereal imports have a positive sign, which implies that an increase in cereal domestic production and cereal imports influence food security. While, cereal exports have a negative sign, which suggest that Nigeria as a nation is experiencing deficit in cereal production and therefore, the little quantity produced and exported posit a treat to food security. Based on the findings of this study, it is therefore recommended that policy formulation such as government subsidies in the agricultural sector and any other intervention programmes that will encourage an increase in domestic cereal production as well as policy formulation that will not totally discourage cereal importation should be implemented since its impact on food security is positive. This can be achieved through trade liberalization. On one hand, in as much as cereal export have significant impact on food security; government should be mindful that policy formulation on cereal exports should take into consideration the level of domestic cereal production and consequently its negative impact on food security.