Essay On Farming In Nigeria

Farming is a significant part of rural economy in South East Nigeria, even in the aftermath of flooding. However, increasingly livelihoods are becoming diverse. This study was based on farming household-level analysis of adaptation that focuses on tactical decisions farmers make in response to floods. These tactical decisions are influenced by a number of socioeconomic factors that include household characteristics, household resource endowments, access to information and availability of formal institutions (input and output markets) for smoothening consumption.

Floods are perhaps the most serious environmental threat to the fight against hunger, malnutrition, disease and poverty in the study area, essentially because of its impact on agricultural productivity. The study confirms that young adults still take up farming as their major occupation in the rural areas. It showed that the major staple crops of these farmers were cassava, yam and maize; while the most important animals reared were poultry and goats. However mixed farming was the most popular farming system in the region. Important adaptation options being used by farmers include diversifying from farm to non–farm activities, out migration from flood risk zones, adapting through relief materials from government and NGOs, income diversification and construction of embankment and gutters. However, 5% of the farmers did not engage in any form of adaptation strategies. Those who did not use any of the methods considered, described lack of information on appropriate adaptation methods, financial constraints, shortage of labor, poor access to market, lack of access to weather forecast technologies as major constraints to adaptation.

The study used the multinomial...

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...poor get the right kind of services to increase their adaptive capacity.

Every adaptation effort results from both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic factors are the efforts made by the vulnerable people themselves (farming households in this case) such as farmers, farmer associations, rural youth associations, community groups, etc. While extrinsic factors are the efforts from external people including governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies, Donor agencies, civil society organizations, etc. Integrating these efforts in a synergistic manner usually results in a more effective adaptation to flood impacts. However, judging from the poor rural background of most farming households in Nigeria (and in most developing societies), farmers will surely need extrinsic supports in order to be able to break the barriers to effective flood adaptation.