Urban Expansion, A Threat to Food Security in Nigeria. Case of Ado-Ekiti

Ado-Ekiti is an urban centre, and capital of Ekiti State which has been experiencing significant and tremendous expansion right from the creation of Ekiti State in 1996. The consequence of this urban sprawl has led to a depletion of agricultural land, which drastically reduces as the city expands. The concern of this research is to delve into the issues of urban expansion as Its rapidly encroaching agricultural land reduces available land for agriculture and continuously depleting the soil fertility which is continually reducing food production output and not that alone farmers were discouraged and farming activities gradually reducing which could pose problem to food production in future as well threatening food security of the nation. The objectives of this research are, to show that urbanization led to loss of agricultural land, to show that urbanization discourage farmers from their farming activities, to show that level of food production is declining over time. Methodology, Data collection for this research were both secondary and primary. The formal is the Identification of expansion at 10 years intervals from 1956-2006 from (Oriye, 2008). The latter is the field work conducted by the researcher whereby questionnaires and interview were used to collect information from about 250 farmers who were randomly selected for the purpose of this research. Information were generated on land fertility, total output, and consumption from over years, also farmers- attitudes toward farming in the process of agricultural land depletion. Data were analysed using both Percentage and Pearson Correlation, percentage was used to measure the rate of increase or decrease of variables across time intervals, while the pearson correlation was used to test the relationship among the variables. Finding of this research showed that about 34km of agricultural land was taking over by urbanization between 1956 and 2006, it was revealed that reduction in agricultural land led reduction in soil fertility and declining output whereas consumption increases. Conclusion it was concluded that there is inverse relationship between urban land expansion and agricultural land which is greatly declining food production and that the furtherance of it is a great threat to food security because by 2030, urban expansion will reduce the agricultural land to about 18km2 if not control and therefore for agricultural land to be preserved, It was recommended that a stringent law should be made for urban land planning to make agricultural land a secluded area that restrict urban expansion.