The purpose of this study was to analyse rural farm households’ access to formal agricultural credit in Yola South Local Government Area of Adamawa state, Nigeria. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the primary data collected using structured questionnaire (from 140 rural farming households). Findings from the study have shown that, 90 % of the respondents were male, mostly educated (70 %) and married (89 %) engaging in farming as their primary livelihood activity (about 81 %) with an average farm size of 2.47 hectares. The result of the binary logit regression has shown that level of education and income do influence access to credit positively, while age and distance to access point negatively influence respondents’ access to formal credit. The study further revealed that, lack of acceptable collateral / security, high interest rates, low financial literacy, and complex banking procedures were the main factors that limits the respondents’ access to credit facility from formal sources. In order for farmers to have an improved access to formal credits, the formation of strong groups that are viable to provide the needed capital is encouraged, banking operations should be simplified to suite farmers’ needs / convenience and financial literacy among farmers should be improved through awareness campaigns (in agricultural extension packages).

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The Nigerian agricultural sector was neglected as a result of the discovery of oil and gas in the early 70s which attracted young people to seek for jobs in the sector. Foreign reserve of the country depleted as a consequence of food imports. The paper focused on Assessment of the effect of petroleum dependency on food crops production with the specific objectives to determine the trend, determinants of food crops production and establish the relationship between output of some food crops and oil exports. Secondary data obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria (annual statement of accounts (various issues) and statistical bulletins from 1970 to 2012 on output of selected food crops (maize, rice, millet, sorghum, wheat and Hungry rice Acha) as well as oil export were used for the study. Data collected were subjected to Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test for stationarity. Trend in food crops production revealed that maize, millet, sorghum, wheat and acha showed steady increase from 1985 -1989 to 2004 -2009 while rice production recorded downward slide from 1970 -1984 but there was steady increase in production from 1985 -2004. There was the existence of stationarity relationship between the selected food crops. Also, there was the existence of the same stochastic trend between selected food crops and oil exports as confirmed by error correction model (ECM). Sustained increase in the exchange rate of the naira and oil export had an inverse relationship with food crop production. Diversifying the economy was recommended to curtail food shortages in the country.