Perception of arable crop farmers on agro-forestry practices in selected local government areas in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the arable crop farmers’ perception on Agroforestry practices in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to collect data from two hundred and forty (240) respondents. Descriptive and ordinal measured statistics were used in data analysis. The results showed that 93% of the respondents were educated, whereas, 59.2%, 62.9 and 72.9% of the respondents were married, male and Christians respectively and made up of farmers with age bracket between 31 – 50 years old, majority of the respondents had household size between 6 and 10 persons.The study also showed that respondents who cultivated less than 1 ha of farmland were 49.6% whilethose that had no access to formal credit were (84.2%). The results from Likert scale on farmersperception based on the mean scores of (3.0) showed that 67.9% of the respondents affirmed thatAgroforestry practices was profitable and favourable. However, the major constrains to Agroforestrypractices in the study area based on the average mean score of 2.5 were fire outbreak with severityindex of 3.10, non-availability of seeds/seedlings (2.81), time consuming (2.65), Pest/rodents anddiseases (2.64), whereas , land tenure and long gestation period had mean severity index of 2.6%and 2.59% respectively. Conclusion drawn from the study is that the agroforestry systems was analternative agricultural practices adopted by some arable crops farmers to increase their incomeand forest products in the study area, while incident of fire out-break should be checked to preventloss of crop, land and farmers income.