Achieving Food Security through Sustainable Aquaculture: An Evidence from Osun State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Fish consumption accounts for over 40% of the protein sources consumed in Nigeria. This number is expected to increase with increasing population in the coming years as fish is a primary source of protein and essential nutrients. This increasing demand means that the current capacity of the aquaculture industry would be overstretched as catch from the wild is already dwindling as a result of stock depletion, overfishing and other global trends. Fish farmers, in their quest to meet up with this demand are shorthanded by increasing cost of production. This is likely to push-out fish farmers from business and would end up leaving consumers vulnerable as the production process might be compromised. The reason being that sustainable aquaculture practices would have been substituted for higher revenue. This research therefore sought to examine sustainability in ensuring food security. The study used the descriptive correlational survey design to ascertain the interplay between environmental, social, and economic sustainability on food security using fish farmers in Osun state, Nigeria as the respondents. The study used multistage sampling to generate a sample size of 150 fish farmers. The study made use of the SmartPLS 3.3.2 software to run the analysis. Results from the study showed that there is a positive significant effect between economic sustainability and food security (? = 0.195, p ? 0.1), as well as social sustainability and food security (? = -0.450, p < 0.01). However, environmental sustainability showed no effect on food security (? = -0.085, p > 0.1). Also, it was revealed that there was no significant association between socioeconomic characteristics of fish farmers and food security. Again, it was revealed that the major constraint of fish farmers was the high cost of feed and poor pricing by customers. It was concluded that for fish farmers to achieve food security, there is the need for an improved economic and social sustainability practices. The research recommends that government of Nigeria should empower extension agents to educate farmers on the need to improve on social and economic sustainability to safeguard food security while farmers themselves are encouraged to seek current and improved knowledge to improve their productivity.