ABSTRACT
Pandemics disrupt agricultural production system. The study was conducted to ascertain the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural activities and food security of farming households in Oredo local government area of Edo State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study described the socio-economic characteristics of farming households, examined the extent of involvement in the agricultural activities before and during the pandemic, determined how the agricultural activities were affected before and during the pandemic, identified the agricultural and COVID-19 related information that were accessible to the farming households and the use of the information before and during the pandemic in the study area, examined the food security level of the farming household in the study area and identified the agricultural-related constraints encountered by the farming household during the COVID-19 pandemic in the study area.
A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select 100 respondents in the study area. Data was collected through the administration of questionnaire to the respondents. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics such as mean, percentage and frequency counts while the hypotheses was tested using inferential statistics like regression and correlation.
Results from the study show that majority of the respondents (57,0%) were adult male and majority (85.0%) of them were married. The mean household size was 8. The mean farming experience was 16 years, and the majority had a small farm size of less than 1 hectare. Results also show that they had high involvement in crop (X̅= 3.59) and mixed farming (X̅ = 4.12). The effects of COVID-19 pandemic was negative on the people with respect to inadequate labours (X̅ = 3.51), difficulty in buying inputs (X̅ = 2.93), loss of outputs (X̅ = 3.27), loss of harvest (X̅ = 2.58), increased cost of inputs (X̅ = 3.46), increased transportation cost (Mean = 3.46) and restriction of movement (X̅ = 4.00) as well as reduced market access (X̅ = 2.65) and reduced income (X̅ = 2.92) were all significant constraints to the respondents faced during COVID-19 pandemic and this might have increased the negative impact of the pandemic on the people in the study area. Results also showed significance in the relationship between the effect of COVID-19 and the food security level in the respondents (R1 = 0.51). It was concluded that the negative effects of the pandemic contributed to making respondents food insecure. It is recommended that government at all levels should continue to subsidize farm inputs for the farmers and lunch palliatives that could reduce the impact of the pandemic.
