Agriculture, Inclusive Growth And National Stability:

Several studies have examined the causes and consequences of major national security threats, especially terrorism, which has become a key global challenge. Others have explored the place targeting behavior of terrorist groups. While food security is widely accepted as an important element of national security, few studies, if any, have explored the nexus between both. Using Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency as a case study, this study explores three dimensions of the food-national security nexus: (1) food insecurity as a root cause of terrorism; (2) the socio-economic consequences/impacts of terrorism on agriculture and food security; and (3) why and how terrorists target agriculture and food security. To explain the vulnerability of food security to terrorism, the study further develops a theoretical model of terrorist motivation and place-targeting behavior, as well as several related hypotheses about their goals of causing food insecurity and enhancing their own food production and supply capacities. The application of this model to data from the Boko Haram insurgency yielded empirical evidence to support a number of hypotheses, including the greater vulnerability of specific agricultural and food production places to terrorist attacks and fatalities due to the commodities they produce. The paper concludes by recommending that the nexus between food security and national security should be more aptly investigated.