Land tenure, land use antecedents, and willingness to embrace resilient farming practices among smallholders in Nigeria

IntroductionShifting to Resilient Farming Practices (RFPs) is crucial in building resilience to climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This study seeks to assess how land tenure and land-use antecedents affect the willingness of smallholder farmers (SHFs) to embrace RFPs in Nigeria.MethodsThe respondents were selected in a multi-stage random sampling process across 16 States and 192 farming communities, yielding a final sample of 1,344 SHFs that cultivate maize and/or rice. The RFPs include a set of good agricultural practices (GAPs), GAPs with manure application and GAPs with agroforestry as against the status quo of conventional agricultural practices. Data were analyzed using descriptive and regression methods.Results and discussionThe results show that 20% of the respondents were willing to adopt agroforestry while 25% and 37% were willing to adopt GAPs with and without manure application respectively. On the other hand, about 18% preferred to stick to the status quo. The multinomial logit result shows that RFPs were significantly influenced by age, education and gender of the household head, membership of the cooperative, household size, land acquisition through inheritance and purchase, newly deforested land, mechanical clearing, and bush burning. The study suggests that land titling and some level of perceived tenure security are necessary conditions for smallholder farmers to embrace RFPs in Nigeria

WETLANDS ATTRIBUTES AND INFLUENCES ON FOOD SECURITY OF HOUSEHOLDS AROUND OGUN RIVER OF NIGERIA

The physical and ecological attributes of wetlands are important in their economic and biological usefulness. To this end, this research answers questions such as: what are the attributes of the wetland in the study area? Do the wetland attributes have influence on food security status of the households? The study was conducted in the wetlands of Ogun River and its tributaries located in the South-western Nigeria. Primary data were collected through the use of personally administered questionnaire and interview. Two stage sampling technique was used in selecting 633 households included in this study. Data were analyzed using descriptive techniques; United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food security module and binary Logit model. The result revealed that wetlands of upper Ogun have abundance of all wetland attributes examined. Food security situation in households with children was not different from those without children. Majority of wetland residents’ households were not food secure leaving about a quarter as food secured. All the eight wetland attributes examined in this study had potential of increasing food security among wetland households as food security was constituently higher in wetlands with abundance of these attributes as against where they are limited. Socio-economic characteristics and wetland attributes have influence on food security status of households. The study therefore recommends that wetlands that are deep and free flowing with unobstructed water ways should be developed by government, international development agencies and non-governmental organizations so as to improve food security status in wetlands areas

Determinants and the perceived effects of adoption of sustainable improved food crop technologies by smallholder farmers along the value chain in Nigeria

Adoption of improved agricultural technologies is fundamental to transformation of sustainable farming system, and a driving force for increasing agricultural productivity. This study provides empirical evidence on the determinants, and the perceived effects of adoption of improved food crop technologies in Nigeria. It is a cross-sectional survey of available technologies and 1,663 farm households in Nigeria. Data were analyzed with both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed very low technology adoption index. Available food crop production technologies used by sampled respondents were assessed as effective, appropriate, readily available, affordable, durable, user and gender friendly, with requisite skill to use them. However, processing technologies such as cabinet dryer were observed as unaffordable, not durable, not gender or users friendly. Packaging machines are also not users or gender friendly; washing machine not affordable, durable and gender friendly. Grain processing technologies like De-stoner, grading, and packaging machines are still not locally available and affordable. While parboilers have a negative impact on product quality, farmers’ health and the environment, tomato grinding machines have positive impact on the quality of the product, health of the users, yield and negatively affect the environment. The main determinants of adoption are the crop types, farm size and locations. Adoption of herbicide and inorganic fertilizer were influenced by travel cost to nearest place of acquisition, while the age of farmer has a positive and significant influence on the adoption of pesticide, water management and cassava harvester. Interestingly, male farmers only exhibit greater likelihood of adopting land preparation, inorganic and organic fertilizer technologies compared to their female counterpart. Therefore, policy options that consider all users at the development stages, favour reduction of travel cost, increase farm size are recommended to encourage sustainable adoption of improved food cop technologies

Adoption of agricultural practices with climate smart agriculture potentials and food security among farm households in northern Nigeria

Despite the conceptual promise and attractiveness of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) in ensuring farmers’ resilience and food security, empirical evidence of its success are observed to be scanty and mixed in terms of results, thus prompting further research. In this article, we analyzed the effect of adopting six Agricultural Practices with CSA Potentials (AP-CSAPs) on food security status using recent cross-sectional data on 238 maize farmers from Northern Nigeria. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Probit regression. The results showed that 92.4% of the maize farmers were male, with a mean age and household size of 44 years and nine persons, respectively. We find that 37.0% of the farm households were food insecure, and adoption of the AP-CSAPs was generally low. However, while refuse retention and agroforestry influenced food security, the remaining four practices considered did not. In addition, we find that land fragmentation, off-farm income and age influence the likelihood of being food secure. We recommend further research on the medium- to long-term effects of AP-CSAPs and suggest that policies aimed at consolidating landholdings to promote monocropping among rural farmers be discouraged