Agricultural Land-Use Systems and Climate Change among Small Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa: Relationship and Evidence of Adaptive Processes in Nigeria

Abstract

In most of sub-Saharan-Africa (SSA), agriculture land-use supports the livelihoods of the majority of people. Land use for agricultural-activity is an economic activity that is highly dependent upon weather and climate that produce food and fiber necessary to sustain human life. Hence, land-use for agriculture is expected to be vulnerable to climate variability and change. This paper deduced that Trans-logarithmic coefficients results of short-run sustainability-index (SRSI), land policy-intervention variables and household-sizes are dominance factors. Also, SRSI showed 0.69, suggesting that 69% of the farmers made unsustainable use of agricultural-land. Marginal Value Product (MVP) model was used as adaptation factors determinants and was tested for its appropriateness which gave a robust estimations. The estimated correlation coefficients among the various adaptation options are significant for 10 out of 19 combinations. Access to information on climate-change from extension or other public sources, farmer-to-farmer extension and knowledge on agro-ecology strengthen the likelihood of climate-change perception and adaptation. The study indicated a strong relationship between efficient use of agricultural land and adaptive processes to climate change. Hence, policies of promoting and motivating sustainable land-use management need to be entrenched, in addition to providing efficient climatic data intervention that will improve on adaptive processes of farmers.