Abstract

The rising cost of feed is a major challenge in Nigeria’s poultry industry. It impacts
production costs and threatens the industry's sustainability and food security.
Implementing effective coping strategies for rising feed costs is crucial for poultry
enterprises. This study examines poverty level, food insecurity status, and poultry
farmers’ coping strategies to high feed costs in South-West, Nigeria. A multistage
sampling procedure was employed for this study. Three states (Lagos, Ogun, and
Oyo) were purposively selected from the six states in the South-West of Nigeria. In
the second stage, 575 poultry farmers from all Poultry Association of Nigeria zones
were selected using a simple random sampling technique. Data on the production
activities of poultry farms were collected from the farmers using a structured
questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, mean per capita
household expenditure, household food insecurity access scale, double log
regression, multinomial logistic regression, and stochastic frontier production
models at p< 0.05. The results of data analysis showed that 48% of the poultry
farmers adopted mixed farming to cope with the rising feed cost while 24.7%,
16.1% and 6.2% adopted the use of finished feed, downsizing their flock size and
at the verge of exiting the venture, respectively, while 5.2% did not change
strategy. At a poverty line of ₦48,500/year, 70.7% of the poultry farmers were
poor. The results also indicated that 25.8% of the poultry farmers were food
secure, 1.6%, 27.2% and 45.4% were mildly, moderately and severely food
insecure, respectively. The multinomial logit analysis results showed that sex
(p<0.1), age (p<0.05), education (p<0.01), farm size (p<0.05), food security status
(p<0.01), and access to credit (p<0.01) were factors for coping with rising feed
costs in South-west Nigeria. The study concludes that the more educated the
poultry farmers are the likely they will adopt the most suitable strategies to reduce
the effect of rising feed costs. The study recommends that poultry farmers should
engage in mixed farming which enables them to be in production.