Economic Benefits of Incorporating Arable Crops in Plantation Establishment: A Concept of Agroforestry

Abstract

Food production is an issue of global concern, it was estimated that about 1.2 billion people are food secured and there is almost 900 million people who are suffering from hunger.This population of people suffering from hunger is high in the Africa region. Hence the reason for various interventions by the developed nations of the world in the Africa region. Therefore the need to research into incorporation of arable crops in plantation establishment, so as to bridge the gap between forestry and agricultural land demand. This study was carried out at settlements around Onigambari forest reserve of Oyo State Nigeria. A multi stage sampling was used in which purposive sampling was used to select four communities where taungya farming is been carried out. Simple random sampling was used to select 25 farmers from each of the participated communities to make up of one hundred selected farmers. Result shown that 82% of the farmers were married having a moderately large household size of between 6 and 8 persons, their household size also helped in their ability to cultivate large land as the result shows that these farmers on the average cultivated between 5-6 acres (49%) and 3-4 acres (30%) which is a large portion of land. Maize and cassava are the majority planted crops by the farmers (maize 91%), (Cassava 87%) cocoyam and melon were also planted. The neighboring market of Ogunmakin in Ogun state boundaring the forest reserve to the south, also enjoy the influx of the arable crops as they were sold in this market at a low cost because of it’s production from nearby forest reserve.