Promoting Conservation Agriculture in Rural Nigeria: Relevance of Environmental Literacy Education

Abstract

Agricultural practice in Nigeria includes farming, fishing and herdskeeping. However, in the rural areas, farming tends to dominate the practice; hence, the term agriculture is generally used interchangeably with farming. Farmers in rural Nigeria generally adopt the traditional method of farming which involves environmentally unfriendly processes known to result in low productivity and income, occasioning the ultimate impoverishment of the farmers. Conservation/ Non-Tillage Agriculture is being advocated globally as a veritable alternative towards the solution of the adverse effect of both the traditional farming method and the contemporary incidence of climate change. Although global statistics indicate that Africa experienced relative increase in her land area under CA between 2007/2008 and 2012, nonetheless, Nigeria was conspicuously not among countries with up to 340 hectares (ha) of land area under CA in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the several known benefits of the CA system, there is a need to promote the adoption of the system by farmers in rural Nigeria. However, the constraints limiting the adoption of the CA system, as well as the notable hiatus in the spurring elements of the farmers’ demographic/ educational profile call for salient approaches (including education) towards promotion of CA among the farmers. The purpose of this paper is to expound the latent benefits and challenges of the CA system, the necessary strategies for the promotion of the system and the pertinence of Environmental Literacy Education to the promotion and adoption of CA in Rural Nigeria.