AGRICULTURAL LAND USE CHANGE AND FOOD SECURITY LINKAGE IN NIGERIA (1981-2023)

The study assessed agricultural land use change and food security linkage in Nigeria from 1981 to 2023. The study adopted a historical survey design using time series data spanning the period of 43 years from 1981 to 2023.Data on the variables were collected from the archives of World Bank and Food and Agriculture Organization database and analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, maximum and minimum with trend graphs, Autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) after testing for unit root, granger causality test and Autoregressive Moving Average (ARIMA) model. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test for unit roots indicated that agricultural land use change is integrated of order one, I(1), while food security is integrated of order two, I(2). This suggests that both variables follow a random walk, meaning their future values do not revert to their past values. The results from the Bound test for a long-run relationship between agricultural land use change and food security showed that the F-statistic value of 4.676068 exceeds the upper critical bound of 4.35 at the 5% significance level, confirming a long-run relationship between the two variables. Additionally, the pairwise Granger causality test revealed a significant causal link between agricultural land use change and food security. The trend forecast indicated that over the next decade, agricultural land use change is expected to follow a downward trend, while food security is projected to increase, assuming other factors remain constant. Based on these findings, the study suggests that the government should implement comprehensive food security monitoring systems to track changes in land use and food security indicators. Early warning systems could prove valuable in predicting and addressing potential food security challenges, particularly in light of declining agricultural productivity.