Abstract

This study examined the relationship between land acquisition and crop market participation among farmers in peri-urban areas of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 200 respondents using structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Land Ownership Index (LOI), Crop Market Participation Index (CMPI) and Tobit regression model. Majority (77.5%) of the crop farmers were male, married (80.5%), natives (71.0%), and had an average household size of 7. Also, 81.0% of the respondents had formal education and on the average, famers had 29 years of farming experience. The existing means of plot acquisition were inheritance (53.4%) - the most common, gift (2.6%), purchase (9.0%), rent (20.1%) and lease (14.9%). The prominent transaction-based land acquisition was rent (45.7%) while that of non-transaction based acquisition was inheritance (95.4%). The average plot size was 2.1hectares and most (53.5%) of the farmers had full ownership of their total land holding (LOI=1). The cultivation methods adopted by farmers were mixed cropping (79.0%), monocropping (12.3%), intercropping (7.3%) and shifting cultivation (1.4%). The household CMPI was found to be 64.1% and maize was the major crop driving market participation with CMPI of 84.7%. The Tobit regression results indicated that at p<0.05, sex, years of education, farming experience and use of improved maize planting material had positive effects on crop market participation. However, land ownership index (p<0.1) had negative effect on crop market participation, implying that land ownership did not translate to crop market participation. Policy effort aimed at making farmers, both natives and non-natives, to acquire land through transactions (rent and lease) will be a potent tool in increasing crop production, thereby also increasing their crop market participation.

Keywords

Agricultural land acquisition, Market participation, Peri-Urban areas