Food insecurity is a challenge in developing countries, especially in the rural areas of Nigeria. It remains a global challenge and continues to be a major public policy in Nigeria and other developing nations. Despite these, COVID-19 set in and posed a serious threat to food system and security globally. This study, therefore, assessed the level of food security among the rural farming households and how they cope with the situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data for the study were collected primarily from 200 farming households with the use of questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics, food security index and Likert scale. The findings showed that the level of food insecurity was very high during the pandemic as 69.5% were food insecure with a high concentration among those with large household size. The widely adopted coping strategies during COVID-19 pandemic among the rural farming households were eating less expensive food (=2.7), reducing rational consumption (=2.68), allowing children to eat first (=2.56), engaging in additional small scale productivity activities (=2.27), skipping meal within a day (=2.26), buying food on credit (=2.05) and borrowing money to buy food (=2.01). The study recommends effective and urgent policy measures which will support rural households’ food availability to boost their food security status. Also, enlightenment of the rural households on the important of modern family planning on their food security status is needed.

The study investigated the perception of arable crop farmers on climate change variability and the mitigating measures taken by them. It was carried out in Ahoada-East Local Government Area of Rivers State. Interview schedule was used to elicit information from the respondents. Proportionate sampling technique was employed to select ninety arable crop farmers from the study area. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and simple Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression at 0.05 significant level was used to test the hypothesis. The findings from the study revealed that female dominated arable crop, and have been farming for the past 12 years. A higher percentage of the arable farmers were aware of climate change and were of the opinion that climate change was caused by bush burning, desertification, clearing of land for agriculture and act of gods. The effects of climate change on arable crops were poor/low yield, increased incidence of pest and diseases and induce spoilage of crops very fast. The mitigating strategies adopted by arable farmers to reduce the effects of climate change on their crops were, early harvesting of crops and mixed farming. Excessive rainfall and sunshine which were some of the signs of climate change affect arable crops when planted, which had led to low yield.

IntroductionTraditionally, capital for investment in agriculture comes from two potential sources, normally personal savings of the farmer and farm credit from financial institutions. However, because of low yield and price uncertainty associated with fishing and farming in developing economies, farmers are often entangled in the vicious cycle of low output-low income-low savings and low investment which again results to low output, this is often referred to as the vicious cycle of poverty (Nwankwo, 2005) therefore, farm credit either from the formal or informal source remains the major means of improving fishing and farming in the country. Consequently upon this, Nigerian government has intervened several times to inject farm credit into the agricultural subsector of the economy. The first attempt at institutional credit for agriculture in Nigeria was made in 1947 with the establishment of the farmers and commercial bank (Adegeye, 1982).Although the farmers and commercial bank collapsed in 1953, the Nigerian Agricultural Bank (NAB) was established and incorporated in 1973 as Nigerian Agricultural and Co-operative Bank (NACB) and therefore became the apex agricultural financial institutions in Nigeria. However, the need to give special attention to various groups of fishermen and farmers, as well as small-scale artisans who contributed to the overall economy of the nation gave birth to the establishment of Nigerian Agricultural Co-operative and Rural Development Bank (NACRDB) through a merger of the former (PBN) people's Bank of Nigeria, the Nigerian Agricultural and Co-operative Bank (NACB) limited and the Risk assets of defunct Family Economic Advancement Programme (FEAP) in October 2000.Empirical studies showed that lack of access to adequate credit can have significant negative consequences on agricultural productivity, technology adoption, food security and overall welfare of farmers and fishermen (Diagne and Zelber, 2001). Farm credit has long been identified as a major input in the development of the fisheries sector in Nigeria. It is very interesting to note that very little foreign capital, private or international has ever gone into the traditional fishing