Improving the food security status of sweet potato-based farm households in the face of post-harvest losses

In developing countries like Nigeria, despite the much-reliance on the Agri-sector for economicgrowth, food security, poverty reduction, and Eco-sustainability, the amount of annual post-harvest losses from agricultural products such as sweet potatoes has hit about half of its production level. This necessitated the conduct of this study in Kwara State, Nigeria to investigate the effect of post-harvest losses on the food security status of sweet potato producers using a multistage sampling technique and a semi-structured questionnaire to elicit information from sweet potato farmers. This information was analyzed with the aid of descriptive statistics, budgetary techniques, and multiple regression. Among other things, the result showed that eight (farming experience, marital status, educational level, household size, farmer's association, amount of credit used, variety of sweet potato, and total farm size) out of the twelve independent variables utilized in the model had a positive effect on the post-harvest loss, this suggests that all these variables contribute towards reducing post-harvest losses. The study recommends that policy actions geared at ensuring ready markets for sweet potatoes be put in place to decrease post-harvest losses and improve the living standard of sweet potato producers.