Effect of Climate Change Mitigating Practices on the Productivity of Arable Crop Farmers in Abia State, Nigeria
Abstract
Agricultural production in Nigeria is heavily dependent on changes in climate over time. Farmers have identified and tried to manage such changes. This study therefore examined the effect of climate change mitigation practices on the productivity of arable crops farmers in Abia State, Nigeria. Data were elicited from 180 farmers (purposively selected) comprising of adopters and non-adopters of climate change mitigation practices drawn from the study population, while, descriptive statistics and regression techniques were used to analyze the data. The result showed that the use of organic manure and improved agricultural seedlings were the most adopted mitigation practices, while, thinning, zero tillage and zero bush burning were the least adopted. Adoption was expected as hypothesized to positively influence productivity as the productivity index of adopters (1.72) was higher than that of non-adopters (1.39), implying that applying climate change mitigation practices guarantee higher farm productivity. Farmers’ age, years in school, farm size, household size, and farming experience were the significant factors that affected productivity for adopters and age and years in school for non-adopters. There was a significant difference in the productivity of adopters and non- adopters. Based on the research, it was recommended that government should formulate and implement viable polices geared towards effectively mitigating the harsh effect of climate variability and effective extension of these practices to farmers.
NAJ supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC: BY license and is open access. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Copyright for articles published in this Journal is retained by the Journal.
