Abstract
Many countries promote food security through agricultural policies to boost agricultural productivity without looking at the effect of such policies on sustainability. This study investigates the effect of agricultural policies and land ownership on the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection from a survey of 288 smallholder farmers in November 2018. The results of the Logistic Regression Model revealed that programs affected the adoption of SAP. Farmers that participated in E-wallet were more likely to adopt fertiliser trees and use animal manure and were less likely to adopt planting basins than non-users. Farmers who participated in Fadama were less likely to adopt crop diversification. Participation in Farmers’ Field School (FFS) contributed to a greater likelihood of farmers adopting crop diversification and cover crops. Landowner farmers were found to be more likely to adopt mulching and less likely to adopt fertiliser trees. This study provides practical implications to foster sustainability through effective agricultural policies and land ownership to facilitate sustainable agricultural practice adoption rates.
Highlights
IntroductionAgricultural input subsidies support policies and programmes that have been used in many countries to boost food production as an effort to achieve food security for a growing population [1]
The results revealed that 53.8% of the respondents used the E-wallet programme, 19.4% of them participated in the Fadama project, while 31.9%
The results demonstrate that farmers with more farming experience were less likely to adopt crop diversification, animal manure, cover crops, and planting basins, which unexpectedly partly contradict the finding of age effects
Summary
Agricultural input subsidies support policies and programmes that have been used in many countries to boost food production as an effort to achieve food security for a growing population [1]. The provision of this support to farmers mostly encourages them to increase their production through intensification or expansion of the land under cultivation, which may endanger agricultural sustainability and the environment if they are poorly designed and implemented [2,3]. Studies show that over the years, policy focus was given to intensification without much concern for the ecological effects [4,5]. The utilisation of input subsidies on non-sustainable farming practices, including intensive tillage together with the extensive application of chemical inputs (e.g., pesticides, herbicides, and mineral fertilisers) has resulted in severe degradation and erosion of soils in Moldova [6]
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