The impact of agricultural insurance adoption on the food security of smallholder rice farmers remains inadequately understood. Thus, this study investigated the effect of agricultural insurance adoption on the food security of smallholder rice farmers in North Central Nigeria. The study utilized data from 400 smallholder rice farmers consisting of 200 adopters and 200 non-adopters of agricultural insurance selected from 16 communities of four States in North Central Nigeria using multistage sampling technique. The collected data were analysed using independent sample t-test and endogenous switching regression model (ESRM). The findings showed that the mean food security of adopters of agricultural insurance in the study area was 1.9728 while that of the non-adopters was 1.0272. The t-test result shows that there was significant difference at 1% in the food security of adopters and non-adopters of agricultural insurance (t = 6.963, p < 0.01). The ESRM showed that rice farmers who adopted agricultural insurance were not better than random rice farmers in terms of food security and vice-versa. The ESRM also revealed that agricultural insurance adoption and food security of smallholder rice farmers were significantly influenced by their socio-economic characteristics. The study recommended that campaigns on farmers’ awareness of agricultural insurance should be intensified by stakeholders in the rice industry to encourage patronage; and that policies and programmes targeted at making smallholder farmers subscribe to agricultural insurance as well as to increase their level of food security should take into consideration the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers in their design and implementation.