ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to examine the relationship existing among migration, farm productivity and food security in Abia State. The study made use of 310 households and data were collected with the use of structured research instrument (questionnaire) and focus group discussions while simple descriptive statistics (tables, charts, frequencies, means and percentages) and econometric tools (multiple regression and logit models) were employed in data analyses. The distribution of the respondents by migration ratio shows that 20% of the households had a negative migration ratio. This negative ratio would have arisen due to the constant in and out movements of temporal migrants which involved children who either came or went for holidays as well as household heads who went on visits. Number of dependents, off farm income, households' participation in social activities and gender were negatively related to net migration ratio at 5, 1, 5 and 5% levels of significance respectively while education of household head, household size and migration experience of household head were positively related to net migration ratio at 5, 5 and 1% levels of significance respectively. Of the migrants' characteristics, permanent migrants, education and years of migration were positively related to volume of remittances sent home. Female headed and migrants sending households were more food secure than male-headed and non-migrants sending households implying that non-migrants sending households were subsisting on less than the daily per capita calorie recommended requirement. The maximum likelihood estimates of the logit model gave a Pseudo R2of 0.831 and 0.6412 implying that 83.1% and 64.12% variations in food security status of the male and female-headed households, respectively, were explained by the explanatory variables included in the model with the Likelihood ratio (LR) statistic of -103.87 and -41.823 for both households significant at 1%, meaning that the explanatory variables included in the model jointly explained the probability of a household being food secure or insecure. Food security status of the households was improved by annual income, level of education, cooperative membership, remittances and farm size and negatively affected by age of household head and household size. The results support the view that migration discourages production in migrant-sending households to some extent. It was recommended, among others, that a better understanding of the outcomes of migration in designing and implementing policies to maximize the benefits of migration and minimize the associated costs be achieved. Pursuit of multiple livelihood activities would facilitate improvement in household income and promote access to food in order to meet their nutritional needs.