Factors Affecting Adaptation of Soil Conservation Practices Among Farmers in Nasarawa State, Nigeria
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Abstract
The research assessed factors affecting adaptation of soil conservation practices among farmers in Nasarawa State, Nigeria, Both Primary and secondary sources of data were used for the study. The result revealed that Use of inorganic fertility by farmers is suffering a setback. (71.70%) of farmers have decreased their use. Thus, majority (86.02%) of them admitted fertility usage to be very beneficial, the scarcity and the expensive nature of the commodity was their main reason of abandoning fertility usage. As a result of fertility scarcity framers are seriously adopting indigenous soil conservation practices that have been known to them over a long period of time. Examples of practices adopted by farmers are the use of urban waste (71.02%); the use of crop mixture (61.45%); increase in use of animal manure (53.14%); crop rotation (28.41%) the use of leguminous crops (17.04%) no-farm residue burning (68.75%) and the use of on-farm residue retention (31. 25%). Much of the organic fertilizer used by the farmers was sourced from around their homes/farmland (46.06%) admitted to have purchased organic matter for farm use. If being purchased, organic matter is very inexpensive (75.57% of farmers). Investment in organic fertilizer as a soil fertility is a very beneficial one (96.02% of farmers) for farmers unlike inorganic fertilizers because they are readily available (85.80% of farmers). Many problems are associated with inorganic residue usage. Example include organic matter heaviness (68.18%); high transportation cost (76.70%); requires sorting (62.50%); filthy/ smelly (25.57%); requires burning (21.02%) and requires treatment. Framers admitted they preferred inorganic matter to organic matter because of its short term replenishment of depleted soil; if only it is available and less expensive. There is the need to look into the possibility of initiating provision of motivational incentives to raise capacity of farmers by the provision of loan and training to make them adopt improve measures of soil fertility in the study area.
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