Impact of Population Growth on Food Availability in Ede, Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the effect of urban growth on food availability in household. This analysis was conducted through an empirical analysis of descriptive and inferential statistics using survey data from 400 respondents in Ede town, Osun State. The growth and development of human settlements, especially urban areas of the developing countries have been on the increase as a result of high birth rate and rural-urban migration; thus making the urbanization process of settlements an unprecedented and inevitable phenomenon. Nigeria urban cities are far from being completely food secured. At the global level, somewhere in the world, a child dies of hunger every five seconds, although the planet has more than enough food for all. The major problem of the study is the availability of land that is meant for agricultural purposes that is now been used for construction purposes, which has made the food production to decline. In this study, the impact of population growth on food availability was examined. Ede town underwent a considerable population growth during the last decades; as a result a part of the green belt of Ede town and its urban fringes has been chopped off and converted into residential areas. A structural questionnaire was also used to elicit information from the resident of the area, data on the population of the study area was projected using Taro Yamane projected formula, while ArcGis9.3 software were used as the processing and analyzing tools.