Assessment of the Effect of Farmer-Herder Conflicts on Food Availability and Accessibility in Adamawa State, Nigeria

Food security is a basic requirement of every society. Thus, nations invest heavily in the agricultural sector of the economy to enhance food production, with the view to safeguarding their citizens from hunger and malnutrition. Notwithstanding, less than 10 years to end hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition, the world is not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal two of zero hunger by 2030. This setback is as a result of climate variability, and conflicts, these threats continued to affect food production and subsequently availability of food. This study assessed the extent of the effect of farmer-herder conflicts on food availability and accessibility in Adamawa state. The study relied on both primary and secondary data for analysis. Food Availability Decline (FAD) by Thomas Malthus 1787 and Food Entitlement Model (FEM) propounded by Amartya Sen 1981 was employed as a theoretical foundation for the study. The study revealed that, the farmer-herder conflicts have negative and significant effect on food availability and accessibility in Adamawa state. Therefore, the study recommends that, Adamawa state should stimulate accelerated investment on biotechnological methods, agricultural research to assure food availability and to tackle food. The state government should introduce special schemes as an entitlement like conditional cash transfer and Save a Million programme, taking cue from the postulation of the Food Entitlement (FEM) theory, for those who are deprived of access to food, especially due to low capability or loss of livelihood.