Taungya Farming -a Strategy for Sustainable Land Management and Agricultural Development in Nigeria

Ojo, Sylvester Oluwadare (2014) Taungya Farming -a Strategy for Sustainable Land Management and Agricultural Development in Nigeria. Advances in Forestry Letters, 3. pp. 1-7.

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Abstract

In Nigeria, land degradation in the form of erosion oriented, soil physical property deterioration, vegetation degradation and hydrological changes are remotely caused by man's inefficient usage of land and its resources. Other causes are inadequate on-farm conservation and shortened bush fallow with inadequate supply of farmyard manure. The consequences of the inefficient land usage are decrease in land productivity and production and the inability of the agricultural sector to produce adequate food to feed the ever growing population. To avert the dire consequences of land degradation, some sustainable land management practices (such as taungya farming) which allow the production of increased agricultural and forest products simultaneously on the same unit of land are being canvassed. Taungya farming is a system of raising forest plantation along with crop husbandry in which the clearing of the site, planting and tendering of the trees are done wholly or in part by the farmers in exchange for the privilege of growing their annual crops on government reserved forests. Taungya farming ensures more land availability to landless farmers, increased food crop production, increased income to farmers, increased production of exotic and indigenous forest species, productive and integrated use of land, it provides an efficient low input biological recycling to substitute the expensive inputs and it increases the productivity of small holder farmers. This paper looked at the profitability, productivity and technical efficiency of Taungya farming in Nigeria for its policy implications. Data obtained from 100 farmers that were selected using multistage sampling technique were analyzed using descriptive statistics, gross margin and the stochastic frontier production function. The study revealed that Taungya farming was profitable. Ageing and farmers with low level educational level were involved. The farmers were relatively technically efficient (TE) with about 85 percent of them having TE above the mean TE of 0.912 for the study area. The study observed that educational level of the farmers, location of farms and technical assistance in form of extension visits led to increase in TE. The TE of the farmers would improve if more land is made available for at locations under government control and thus Taungya farming would be a driving force in ensuring a sustainable land resources management with increased productivity in Nigeria.

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