期刊名称：International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management
电子版ISSN：2395-5252
出版年度：2020
卷号：2
期号：5
页码：321-327
DOI：10.35629/5252-0205273280
语种：English
出版社：IJAEM JOURNAL
摘要：The study examined the awareness and importance of farmer’s participation in agroforestry practices in four selected villages of Igabi local government area, Kaduna State. Multi- stage, purposive and random sampling method were used to select 100 agro-forestry farmers and structured questionnaire administered on them. Descriptive statistics such as percentage and Likert scale were used to analyze the data obtained. The result revealed that male (67.00%) dominated the agroforestry farming enterprise; 97.00 % of the respondents are in their working age group of 21- 60 years. The greatest percentage (61.00 %) was married. 89.00 % had education, while 11.00 % never attended school. The study revealed that farmers in the study area were aware and practicing different types of agroforestry system such as mulching with forest species (93.00%), retaining of trees on the farm(88.00%), planting of trees along with the retained trees(38.00%), taungya farming system(28.00%), and alley farming(20.00%). The study also revealed the importance of agroforestry practice to the farmers which include; increased in agricultural productivity (mean score of 3.40), improved environmental sustainability (mean score of 3.10 ), enhancement of nutritional status of the farmers households(mean score of3.00), use for medicinal purposes (mean score of 2.90 ), reduction of land degradation due to deforestation (mean score of 2.85), enhancement of farmers income generation (mean score of 2.70 ), improvement in soil fertility (mean score of 2.60). and access to agroforestry tree products(mean score of 2.55). However the farmers were constrained with factor such as non availability of farm labour(77.00% ), high cost of improved agro - forestry tree planting materials(67.00%), lack of capital (65.00%), lack of credit (62.00%), poor soil fertility(57.00%), inheritance system of land ownership (55.00%), high cost of fertilizers (52.00%) , poor extension service delivery (47.00%) and theft of produce(40.00%). The study therefore recommends that awareness of the importance of agroforestry shoukd be made known to farmers through organizing workshops and seminars, radio programmes and community awareness campaign by the extension agents. Land should be made available to farmers by state government who owned all land based on the land act operated in the country and government and other stakeholders in food production sector should rendered assistance in the areas of provision of credit facilities, exotic species, improved seedlings and subsidized agricultural inputs like fertilizer to the farmers.
