The study examined differences in entrepreneurial diversification among male and female rural farming household in Kwara State, Nigeria. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select a total sample size of 320 respondents. Percentages, mean and regression were used for data analysis. Findings revealed that male and female farmers engaged in several entrepreneurial activities but men (0.51) were more diversified than female (0.47). Level of education, household size and access to credit were the major determinants of the entrepreneurial creativity of the respondents varying degree of significance. Both men and women were differentiated along entrepreneurial activities in search of daily need but men were more creative compared to their women counterparts. Education of male and female entrepreneurs should be encouraged and access to resources among rural farming households to stem up their creative thinking.

The study assessed food crop diversification among smallholder male and female farmers in Kwara State, Nigeria. A two-stage sampling technique was used to select 384 respondents disaggregated into 197 males and 187 females. Percentages, mean and standard deviation and chart were used for data analysis. Findings showed that the mean number of food crop grown by male farmers was 4.8 while that of female was 3.3 and most (51.4% and 49.3%) of male and female farmers growing 3 and 5 crops at a time respectively. Findings from crop diversification index showed that most of male farmers fall into high diversification group (0.60-0.70) while most female farmers were moderately (0.50-0.60) diversified. It further shows that education, farm size and access to farm machineries and credit positively and significantly influence the extent of crop diversification among male and female smallholder farmers (P≥0.05). Male farmers were found to be highly diversified compared to female farmers. Extension education toward bridging Creative Commons User License: CC BY-NC-ND

The frequency and intensity of climatic variables as indicators of climate change have been increasingly recognised as global crisis with significant impact on biodiversity, household food security and gender roles. This study therefore analysed gender vulnerability of smallholder farming households to climate variability and change in North-central Nigeria. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 768 respondents from the study area. Indicator-based approach was adopted for this study and a structured questionnaire was used to elicit data from 3, 6, and 8 indicators of three components of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Data obtained were subjected to linear normalisation, non-weight vulnerability index, and both descriptive and inferential statistics. Results show that both male- and female-headed households were vulnerable to changing climate and the female-headed ones were more vulnerable (0.410) compared to their male counterparts with an index of 0.321. The high vulnerability of female-headed households was due to their extent of exposure (0.839) and sensitivity (0.658) to climate change with low adaptive capacities (0.189). Also, there was a positive and significant difference between male (t = 5.142) and female (t = 5.079) headed households’ in their level of vulnerability to climate change (p ≤ 0.05). This study recommends access to technology that helps farmers receive timely information on climate variables, and farmers’ access to agricultural insurance scheme would help improve adaptive capacity and reduce their vulnerability. Also, gender-sensitive framework that could bridge the gaps between male- and female-headed households are needed to form a policy development agenda by the government in order to encourage more female households’ to participate in climate change mitigation.

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