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Some Characteristics of Nigerian Smallholders: A Case Study from Western Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Paul S. Zuckerman
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Extract

A series of some two hundred questions on farmers' opinions, behavior, and attitudes were asked during the course of a traditional cost route farm management survey of one hundred Nigerian smallholders. The answers illuminated the following:

1. farmers' tendency to make significant changes in their allocation of resources from one season to the next, reflecting the inherent flexibility of the farming system practiced;

2. farmers' ability to distinguish clearly between the characteristics of different crops, including variability of physical yield levels;

3. the distinct uses to which different crops were put;

4. satisfaction with the nutritional value of their diet;

5. reasons for practicing intercropping;

6. farmers' planning capability;

7. assessment of some types of risk;

8. imperfect knowledge of factor prices; and

9. the extensive intra- and inter-family monetary relationships.

The sample of one hundred smallholders were located at three different villages in the former Western Region of Nigeria. All farmers were Yoruba and therefore had similar ethnic characteristics. Cropping patterns in each village were markedly different as each village was in a different ecological zone. Cocoa dominated the cropping patterns of Akinlalu village in the low rainfall forest region, yam and cocoa dominated at Idi-Emi in the derived savannah region; and maize and yam dominated at Hero village in the southern Guinea savannah region. The survey was carried out during the 1970-71 crop season. The sample size was 33 at both Akinlalu and Idi-Emi, and 34 at Ilero (see Zuckerman, 1979, for details).

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 1979 , pp. 65 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1979

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References

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