Rural Women’s Information Seeking Behaviour on Household Food Security Issues in Bayelsa State, Nigeria
Ifeoma Q. Anugwa, Agwu E. Agwu · 2018
Knowledge and information on scientific and technological issues is a necessary condition for rural women to achieve household food security. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the information seeking behaviour of rural women on household food security issues in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Multistage random sampling procedure was opted to select 120 rural women across twelve town communities in the State. Structured interview schedule was used for collection of data from the sampled respondents. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistical tools in software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Food security index was used to analyze the food security status of the respondents in the study area. Findings revealed that 61% of the respondents were food insecure, while 39% were food secure. Information on food security issues were mainly sourced from families (52.5%), friends/neighbours (46.7%) and other farmers (30.8%). The respondents perceived information on productive resources such as land, inputs and capital (M =1.18); as their most important information needs. The study further revealed that the respondents sought information on food preparation (88.5%), food processing (84.7%), and farming system (80.8%) from their families. They also had a low information seeking behaviour. The respondents perceived poor income (M = 1.55), and concealment of information by information providers (M = 1.35), among others, as barriers to seeking information. The study underlined the importance of a well-organized institutional information provision on agricultural technologies through extension services to rural women.