The effect of climate smart agricultural practices on poverty status of maize rural farming household in Sokoto State, Nigeria

Abstract

The current level of poverty in Nigeria is disturbing and climate change impends food security and increases poverty indirectly and directly on individuals or households. Farming households are changing agricultural practices as a result of global observation of climatic and environmental changes. This research work recognised a link which exists between climate change, climate smart agricultural practices (CSAP) and poverty status of farming households in North West Nigeria. The objective of this study is to determine the effects of climate smart agricultural practices on poverty status of maize farming household in the study area. This is with a view to establishing the consequences of climate variation and its influence on poverty status among rural farmers in North West Nigeria. The multi-stage, sampling techniques was used to select three hundred and twenty (320) respondents who provided the relevant primary data for this study through a set of pre-tested structured questionnaires. The data were analysed with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and with instrumental variable of a probit regression model. The regression analysis result shows that CSAP has effect on poverty status of maize rural farming household in Sokoto State were maize enterprises decreases the odds or probability of being poor significantly. Study recommended that Governmental and farmers' organisations can fashion out a favourable training workshop to inspire the low-users of CSA to improve on their performance. Also, the rural farmers should be encouraged to develop interest in CSAP, like the empowerment programmes instituted by the government through Agricultural Development Project (ADP). The policies on informal education should be enhanced and enforced in the curriculum to meet the CSAP challenges. Extension delivery system approach should be upgraded to meet the present information age. The study therefore recommends that massive campaigns be made by government, civil societies and the media to create awareness about CSAP and to proffer indigenous solutions that address the issue of low-users and the constraints being faced.

Use of Mobile Phone Applications by Farmers in North West Nigeria

“…The deployment of cell phone technology has not been optimized to its fullest potentials in the Northwest zone of Nigeria as unveiled by Khidir (2019) in a study to ascertain the awareness and usage status of mobile phone apps by farmers in the region. Despite the fact that the zone is recognized as an agricultural centre of the nation, with the majority of people from the zone engaging primarily in farming as their main source of livelihood (Olapojo, 2012;Ekpa, 2017;Ekpa, Oladele and Akinyemi, 2017), the zone is acknowledged Tobit regression model was used to compute factors that influence the rate at which the farmers use mobile phone apps at their disposal. The Tobit model is specified as follows: Y*= Xiβ + ε ……………………………………………………………………………….…”

Laudable Relations

“…The other piece of advice from the donor and supported by the INGO head office was to suggest that the community be encouraged to move away from maize as a staple, given the marginal environment in which it was grown. As I noted in my report, moving away from established food staples is a fraught process in any society and has little if any record of success anywhere (Ekpa 2018;Kilby 2019). Local communities are best placed to determine the best food crops for their particular context, and the focus of external support should be to improve existing systems, a lesson that aid donors across the board seem to have trouble learning (Gliessman 2020).…”

Effects of capacity building on rural women involvement in Climate Smart Agriculture initiatives in Rivers state, Nigeria

“…The majority of the rural women indicated they engaged in other nonagricultural income-generating activities such as business/trading (62.52%), civil service (21.89%), pensioners (3.13%), while 12.5% of the respondents had no other income generating activity aside farming. This may result to low uptake of climate change adaptation strategies because some studies (Akwiwu 2018, Ekpa andOladele, 2018;Adebayo and Ojogu, 2019;Terdoo, 2020) have shown that when people have other alternative means of livelihood to agriculture, they may show lackadaisical attitude towards climate change issues which affect agriculture. Majority (40.63%) of the rural women indicated they had taken Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) and had O level.…”