This study evaluates the performance of food crop sector in Nigeria from 1999-2016. The statistics
show that Nigeria is having food insecurity problems: very low value of food production per capita; low and declining average dietary energy supply adequacy; very high variability in per capita food production and supply, and a high depth of food deficit that has been on the increase since 2006. The result also shows that agriculture’s contribution to Nigerian GDP has consistently declined from 37.5 percent in 2002 to 21.2 percent in 2016, and that food crop production declined from over 34 percent of the GDP in 2002 to 18.6 percent in 2016. Due to this high depth of food deficit, over 14 million people in the country are undernourished, and this has been increasing geometrically since 2005. Also, more than six million of the under-five children are stunted, and the consumer price of foods has been high and rising. Compared to other countries, there has not been any significant improvement in reducing the depth of food deficit in Nigeria.
