Abstract
Aims: Acquiring suitable land for agricultural purposes is a challenge for most prospective farmers in South-West, Nigeria. This makes them acquire lands in government-owned forest reserves with special contractual agreements. Therefore, we evaluate farmers’ preferences for selected attributes of farming enclaves in four hypothetical forest reserves in South-West, Nigeria.
 Study Design: An orthogonal main effects design was used to construct the choice sets used for preference elicitation.
 Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in December, 2017 in randomly selected communities of Oluyole Local government area of Oyo State, South-West, Nigeria. 
 Methodology: Focus group discussions and relevant literature search were conducted to identify the relevant attributes. Four hypothetical forest reserves were considered and the selected attributes were size of the farmland, type of cropping system and land rent fee per hectare. Multistage sampling techniques were used to select 100 farmers and data were collected via face-to- interview. Multinomial logit model was used to analyse the data and willingness to pay for each of the selected attributes was also calculated.
 Results and Conclusion: We find that farmers value intercropping system the most. The coefficient of land rent fee (per hectare) is negative and significant implying that farmers obtain higher utility from very low land rent fees. They are willing to pay an extra 12.50 US Dollars land rent fees (per hectare) to have intercropping on a particular farming enclave while avoiding other enclaves with other cropping systems. Farm size and taungya do not contribute significantly to the farmers’ choice of farming enclave. These results will help forest reserve managers in formulating policies that will benefit farmers without jeopardising efficient management of forest resources.
Highlights
One of the resources required for the efficient production of goods and services is land
It is critical to the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs) because of its major role in driving economic growth and serving as a source of livelihood, helping to reduce hunger and poverty for billions worldwide [2, 3, 4]
About 70% of Nigerians are in the agricultural sector making land an important asset and its acquisition a major issue for many Nigerians [6, 7, 8]
Summary
One of the resources required for the efficient production of goods and services is land. Most rural communities still practice the traditional land tenure system where land is acquired through inheritance. This leads to continuous land fragmentation making it impossible for the owners especially farmers to have a large expanse of land required for commercialized agriculture. Available lands are in high demand for other purposes other than agriculture This makes them to be very expensive and unaffordable for prospective farmers. These farmers move from one area to the other in search of farmlands that are fertile, bigger in size with cheaper land rent fees and possibly longer years of use [13, 14]
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