Comparative analysis of the poverty and profitability status of adopters and non-adopters of sustainable taungya farming in ogun state

This paper investigates the comparative analysis of the poverty and profitability status of adopters and non-adopters of sustainable taungya farming in Ogun State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was employed for this study. At the first stage, primary data were obtained from a cross-sectional survey of 160 farmers drawn from a purposive selection of two Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) zones; Ijebu east and Ilaro zones. The second stage involved the proportionate selection of five blocks from the two ADP zones and at the third stage, four cells each were randomly selected per block. However, only 155 respondents who completed all the questionnaire items were actually used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics, Foster, Greer and Thorbecke Poverty Index, and Budgetary techniques were used for data analysis. Results revealed that 62.5% of the farmers adopted taungya farming as a form of agroforestry practice, while 34.3% of the farmers were non-adopters. The estimated relative poverty line was N2627.59 per week. Poverty incidence, depth and severity among the adopters were 30.1%, 6.8% and 0.4% respectively while they were 45.4%, 26.3% and 6.9% respectively for the non-adopters. The decomposition of the poverty status according to sub-groups was equally shown. The budgetary analysis showed that the net farm income of adopters which was N249,327/ha was significantly (p<0.05) different from that of the non-adopters which was N167,391/ha. The study concluded that taungya farming improved adopter’s welfare compared to non-adopters and accounted positively in reducing poverty. This study recommended that taungya farming should be encouraged to increase rural farmers’ income, and alleviate poverty.