Soil conservation practices adopted by small scale yam farmers in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Farmers require demonstrable knowledge, skills, behaviour and attitude to enable them adopt new technologies at a certain performance standard. It is on this basis that the study was conducted to examine the soil conservation practices adopted by small scale farmers more specifically in Osun state, Nigeria. A multistage random sampling technique was used to select 120 farmers. Primary data was used for this study. The primary data were generated through interview and a well-structured questionnaire. The analytical tools used were descriptive statistics and Logit regression model. The result showed that the average age of the respondents was 48 years and about 65.0% were married. The major soil conservation practices adopted by the respondents were use of cover crop with a weighted mean of 2.35, mulching (χ =2.19), crop rotation (χ =2.19), strip cropping (χ =2.18) and multiple cropping (χ =2.15). The major perceived effects of soil conservation practices by the respondents were: increase in the organic matter and nutrient content of the soil with weighted mean of 4.34, increase in infiltration capacity of the soil (χ =4.32), increase the stability of fine pores (χ =4.30), helped in increasing the yield of crop (χ =4.24) and improved the physical properties of soil(χ =4.23). The result of the regression analysis revealed that the probability of adopting soil conservation practice is positively and statistically influenced by education, access to credit, household, farm size, and extension contact. The study also showed that low level of contact with extension agent, inadequate knowledge and information, difficulty to plough with oxen, lack of capital, lack of improved soil conservation practices, high labour and overlap with off-farm activities are the major constraints hindering the adoption of soil conservation practices in the study area. It was hence recommended that Government and non-Government organizations working within rural areas should endeavor to create more awareness on importance and effectiveness of soil conservation practices to improve the adoption rate.