Economic Benefits of Food Legume Cultivation in Benue State-Nigeria

Abstract

There has been an increased advocacy on food legume cultivation as an economical and sustainable means of soil fertilization due to the inherent problems of inorganic fertilizers such as unavailability, high cost, environmental hazards and soil degradation. This study was therefore undertaken to assess the effect of food legume cultivation on farmers’ output, income, household inventory and inorganic fertilizer usage. The study adopted “adopters and non-adopters”method in assessing the effect of food legume technology adoption on farmers’welbeing. The study which was carried out in 2007 & 2009 respectively employed multi-stage sampling techniques in selecting 300 respondents and data were collected using structured questionnaire. Simple descriptive statistics, correlation and t-test were used to analyse the data. The result of correlation analysis shows that a significant positive relationship exist between age, household size, farming experience, quantity of inorganic fertilizer used and the number of legumes planted by farmers. The result shows that a significant positive difference (t = 7.04, 2.84, 2.33, 4.09 and 2.62; P = .05) was found between household inventories of the cultivators and non- cultivators of legume crops in terms of household ownership, quality of roof, wall, water source and possession of phone. Similarly, the mean aggregate crop yield of adopters was found to be significantly higher (t = 2.055; P = .05) than that of the non-adopters. Also, non-adopters used a significantly higher (t=2.007; P = .05) quantities of inorganic fertilizers than the adopters. The major constraints of food legume production includes pests and diseases, drought, erosion and tediousness involved in the farm work. The study concludes that cultivation of legume crop by farmers improved their aggregate crop outputs, income and livelihood. The study recommends increased awareness campaign on the cultivation of food legume crops, adequate and regular supply of production and marketing inputs to ensure sustainability of the technology.