Management problem of crop residues production in Aliero Local Government Area of Kebbi State, Nigeria

Abstract

A study was conducted to examine the management problems of crop residues production in five villages within Aliero Local Government Area of Kebbi State, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was administered to 75 respondents within the study area. The data collected was analyzed using simple statistical tools such as frequency counts and percentages. The family size of the respondents showed that more than half (52.41%) had 5-8 members. Majority of the respondents were within the age categories of 23-32 (39.60%) and 32-42 years (33.30%). It was observed that most of the respondents were male (78.08%) with different educational background. The study revealed that about 47.95% of the respondents were farmers. Mixed cropping is common to the household with cereal and legume crops combination; sorghum/groundnut (6.85%), millet/groundnut (28.03%) and sorghum/cowpea (36.99%). Various storage methods existed among the house hold in handling crop residues as majority (45.21%) kept crop residues on the roof tops and the least (9.59%) kept crop residues on the tree branches. Crop residues were from groundnut straws, cowpea straws, maize stover, millet stover and rice straws with sorghum stover constituting the highest (30.14%). Majority of the respondents (39.74%) source their crop residues from self production. The study also showed that all the respondents encountered one or more management problems which limit crop residue production and they include high cost of irrigation (78.08%), inadequate storage structures (75.34%) and inadequate capital (68.86%) among others constitute the prominent problems to crop residue production in the study area.