Assessing the impact of the adoption of agroforestry technology on food production and poverty reduction among farming households in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study determines the impact of agroforestry practices on food production, income generation and poverty reduction among farming households in Oyo State, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the respondents. Both descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages as well as inferential statistics such as Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Foster Greer Thorbecke (FGT) analysis were used in the study. It was discovered that the propensity score distribution and common support for propensity score estimation shows the results from the covariate balancing tests both before and after matching in which the treatment (adopters) and comparison (non-adopters) groups are said to be balanced. The result of the impact of the adoption of agroforestry practices on farmers' income from the PSM analysis shows that the adoption produces a positive and significant impact on the farmers' income, while the result of the impact of the adoption on farmers' output was found to be negative, though not significant. This could be attributed to improper adoption or practices of the technologies by the farmers. It was also discovered that about 27% of the adopters fell below the poverty line ($183.25) and were therefore regarded as poor while about 67% of the non-adopters fell below the poverty line ($102.21) and can therefore be described as poor. FGT poverty index was then used to show the extent of poverty among the farming households and it was found that the adopters of agroforestry technology were faring better than the non-adopters of agroforestry technology.