Effect of adoption of alternative conservation agricultural practices on smallholder farmers’ production output in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Sustainable agricultural practices, such as conservation agriculture (CA), remain an important crux of conservation efforts to boost food crop production output due to productivity decline. Using cross-sectional survey data from 350 smallholder farmers, this study investigated the likelihood of adoption of CA practices in South-West Nigeria based on a number of factors as well as factors predicted to effect farmers’ output when these practices were adopted. Cross-tabulation technique was applied to profile the farmers’ features, while heckman selectivity model was used to estimate the effect of CA adoption on farmers’ production output from CA plots and to sequentially address potential selectivity problem in a bid to disentangle the effect of adoption and other confounders which vary across individual farmers. Findings revealed that exposure time period, land acquisition, CA farm size cultivated, total farm size, access to extension services and social capital components are significant predictors of adoption. Likewise, human capital (years of formal education and farming experience), marital status, access to extension service and frequency of extension visit significantly predict farmers’ production output. Most importantly, the estimated selection bias control parameter was significantly different from zero, which is an indication that there was a significant effect of CA adoption on farmers’ production output from CA plot.

Keywords

• adoption
• conservation agriculture
• smallholder
• heckman selectivity model
• nigeria