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The study examined the contributions of sub-units of the crop subsector to the economic development of Nigeria (approximated by the per capita GDP (PCI)) from 1962 to 2020. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) was used to establish the existence of the cointegration among the specified series. The findings revealed that, the sub-components of the crop sub-sector co-integrate with the per capita GDP in the long run. The empirical results further revealed that in the short run, sugar-based crops gross production, vegetable, and fruit gross production have a significant relationship with the PCI in Nigeria; whereas the cereal gross production, oil-based crop gross production, sugar crop gross production, and vegetable and fruit gross production were long run significant determinants. The findings call for appropriate short and long-term economic policy packages that should stimulate investment opportunities in the crop sub-sector to increase the sub-sector’s productivity for greater economic development stimulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart agriculture has the potential for economic benefits through increased agricultural productivity, cost efficiency and market opportunities through increased communication; and environmental benefits as this will in turn, lead to greater food security, profitability and sustainability. This article presents the practices and challenges to smart agriculture among commercial arable crop farmers in Southwest, Nigeria considering the forms of digitalization in use, as well as the frequency of usage, period of usage, and challenges to the usage. We randomly sampled 45 commercial arable crop farmers across the southwest states in Nigeria. We made use of Structured questionnaire to extract needed information from the respondents. The data obtained were analysed with descriptive statistics. Our findings showed that the forms of digitalization used by agricultural firms include mobile phone (100%), cloud computing (56%), software (58%), remote sensing (40%), digital marketing (52%), and GIS (35%) while the average period of usage of digitalization was 10years. Our findings also revealed that the main challenges to the use of digitalization are high cost of procurement and installation (93%), low awareness of current state of digitalization in agriculture (84%), limited technical knowhow (78%), poor power supply (67%), and high cost of energy (62%). Although evidence at short-term revealed that smart agriculture has the potential of tackling key development issues such as food insecurity, poor output, poverty, and unemployment; the study showed that there is a need to enlighten agricultural firms of the benefits of smart agriculture, as well as plan and invest on sustainability of digitalization in agriculture to harness its full benefits/potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has always been a thing of concern in agricultural production, especially in yam production. The study investigated farmer adaptation strategies to the effect of climate change on yam production in Kogi State with the specific objectives of assessing the socio-economic characteristics of farmers, farmers’ climate related constraints, the adaptation strategies employed by farmers, and yam farmers’ level of knowledge on climate change. A multistage sampling technique was used to select one hundred and twenty respondents from the different communities selected in the study area in year 2019. Data were collected through structured interview schedule. The data were analysed using frequency counts, percentages and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Results obtained showed that farmers in the study area were mostly males with a mean age of 44.5 years. Most of the yam farmers in Kogi State got information on climate change from other farmers (77.3%) and (81.3%) of the respondents aware of climate change. Furthermore, the major effects of climate change as identified by the respondents were pest infestation (90.8%) and high rate weed growth (88.3%). Various strategies adopted by yam farmers include mulching (Mean=5.0), intercropping yam with other crops (Mean=4.5), use of weather-resistant variety (Mean=4.1) and use of early maturing crop varieties (Mean=3.8). Pearson product moment correlation shows that there is a significant relationship between estimated annual (r = 0.887), income farming experience (r = 0.274) and the farmers’ level of awareness. Therefore, efforts should be made towards developing and making available, yam seeds and yam tubers that can adapt to the change in climate and weather elements like flood and drought. These findings suggest the need for more training on climate change, the adaptation methods, environmental education and sustainability of yam cropping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study established the empirical relationship between agricultural production indicators and some key macroeconomic fundamentals in Nigeria. Data (time series from 1961 to 2020) were collected from the World Bank, Food and Agricultural Organization and the Central Bank of Nigeria. The properties of the series were tested with the Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test and improved ADF-GLS unit root test. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) was used to establish the existence of the cointegration among the specified series. The empirical results revealed that, the per capita real GDP, land density and consumer price index are the determinants of crop production gross index in the long run, whereas, per capita income, lending rate, land density and total import are the short run determinants. Also, the per capita income, land density, consumer price index and the nominal exchange rate influence the agricultural gross production index in the long run; while the per capita income and land density were the short run determinants. Moreover, land density, per capita income and balance of trade were found to determine the livestock gross production index in the long run; while the lending rate, land density and inflation rate were the short run determinants. Based on the findings, it is recommended that, specific policy to focus on the improvement of the per capita income, restricted trade policy and reduction and or stabilization of inflation rate in the country are inevitable. The lending interest rate should be regulated to provide more credit to the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]