THE EFFECT OF NATIONAL HOME-GROWN SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAMME ON LOCAL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN RIJAU LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, NIGER STATE (2017-2021)

Abstract

Since its independence in 1960, Nigeria has been introducing and reintroducing plans, policies, programmes and projects with the hope of attaining food security, poverty reduction and overall improvement in the condition of living of rural inhabitants. National Home Grown School Feeding Programme is one of the policies that were introduced by the Federal Government as a component of the National Social Investment Programme to among other things promote local agricultural production, create employment and improve primary education in the country. Despite these, several researches carried out to study the homegrown school feeding programme give little attention to this aspect. It is noted that in spite of the policy intention of the NHGSFP, local agricultural production in Rijau Local Government Area is still not improving. It is against the foregoing, a study of this nature is needed to unravel the effect of the programme on local agricultural production. This study, therefore, examines the effect of procurement of local agricultural goods on Local Agricultural Production in Rijau Local Government Area, Niger State. The study employed a mixed methodology of research where Questionnaires and personal interviews were used to generate data while the data collected were analysed using the convergent parallel method. The study formulated and tested null hypothesis using linear regression with the help of SPSS version 20. The study revealed among others, that the NHGSF programme did not promote local agricultural production in the study area largely due to the strategy adopted by the State government in purchasing foodstuff used for the preparation of meals given to pupils. The study recommends among others; government should change the procurement strategy to enable the local smallholder farmers sell their farm produce to the implementing agency of the programme this is in tandem with the policy document of the HGSFP.