Knowledge and Attitude of Rural Women towards Agroforestry Practices in Kaduna State

Abstract

Agroforestry practices offer a solution to the problem posed by the high demand on land and stands as a means of halting the vicious circle of deforestation, soil erosion and degradation. This study assessed the knowledge and attitude of rural women towards agroforestry practices in Kaduna State. The objectives of the study were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of rural women, examine the sources of information on agroforestry, find out the level of knowledge of rural women on agroforestry practices and ascertain the attitude of rural women toward agroforestry practices. From the thirteen (13) districts in Chikun LGA, six districts were randomly selected. Twenty women were sampled from each district to give a total of one hundred and twenty (120) respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyze the data. Knowledge test and Mean score were used to determine the knowledge and attitude of rural women towards agroforestry practices. Inferential statistics were used to test the hypotheses. The mean age was 30.23 years. Silvopastural, Taungya system and Tropical shelter wood system were the main types of agroforestry practices. Chi-square showed that there were significant relationships between some selected socio-economic characteristics such as age ( =75.625, p = .001), membership of organization ( = 16.499, p = .003), educational status ( = 11.704, p = .020) and agroforestry practices. Correlation analysis showed that there were significant relationships between knowledge (r = .652, p = .002), attitude (r = .264, p = .001) and agroforestry practices. In conclusion, rural women have low level of knowledge and unfavourable attitude towards agroforestry practices. This study recommends that agroforestry training should be conducted for the rural women in order to increase their knowledge level which will in turn lead to a favourable attitude towards agroforestry practices.