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Women remain a key driver of agricultural growth due to their large population and contribution to the farm labour force. Yet, these women are vulnerable to several menaces, such as food insecurity and poor well-being, that require them to participate in agricultural commercialisation. Identifying the drivers of market participation will inform them on where to channel their limited resources. Thus, this study assessed the market participation of women bambara nut farmers, its drivers, and its contribution to food security using crop output market participation share, ordered logit, binary logit and the USDA 18 food security questionnaire core module. The study found that smallholder women's market participation or commercialization ranges from 0 to 89.4% with an average of 54.53%, indicating a medium level of commercialization, and the smallholder women farmers have a 45.47% full commercialization gap. The significant factors responsible for their level of market participation were farm size, credit, cooperative membership, output, fertilizer usage, farm machinery, household size, and distance to market. Above half (56.67%) of them were food insecure. However, their food security level increases as the commercialization level increases, indicating that agricultural commercialisation improved household food security. Logistic regression results further revealed that agricultural commercialisation significantly enhanced household food security. The major constraints affecting women farmers are the high cost of inputs, low capital, poor access to credit, restrictions on land usage, poor agricultural pricing, a lack of modern storage facilities, and on-farm and post-harvest losses. These results necessitate the need to support smallholder women with credit, subsidized farm machinery, and fertilizer to promote commercialisation among them, which is needed to be food secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial intervention program requires information on the farm's financial capacity. Yet there is a dearth of empirical information on the fund security status of small-scale fish agribusiness to warrant a bailout intervention. Thus, this study investigated the fund security status of small-scale fish farms in Nigeria. Descriptive statistics, profitability analysis (gross margin, net profit, gross ratio, operating ratio, return on capital invested, benefit–cost ratio), and a logistic model were used to analyze the data collected primarily. The result showed that personal savings and family and friends were the major sources of financial capital for the farmers. From an average annual output of 2109.09 kg of fish, the small-scale fish farmers had a gross margin of USD 4312.81, a net profit of USD 3817.47, an operating ratio of 0.44, a return on capital invested of 0.98, and a benefit–cost ratio of 1.98. Despite fish farming being a profitable venture, only 31.7% of the small-scale fish farms were fund secured, while 68.33% had fund capacity below the fund security benchmark. Farmers' savings, remittance off-farm, remittance on-farm, loans, farmers' age, and farm size had a positive influence on the fund security status of small-scale fish farms, while the interest rate had a negative effect on it. There is thus a need for financial institutions to provide facilities that would encourage savings and release adequate financial interventions through loanable funds at a lower interest rate to small-scale fish farmers to boost their fund security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]