Abstract

The Agricultural Transformation Agenda of the Federal Government of Nigeria aimed at boosting agricultural production and thus reducing rural poverty have been achieved through donor-sponsored programme intervention. In line with this initiative, this study analyzed effect of IFAD/FGN/NDDC/Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programme on the poverty profiles of participating and non-participating farmers in Abia State, Nigeria. Purposive and multistage random sampling techniques were used in the selection of Local Government Areas, participating communities, farmer groups and participating farmers. The sample size was 240 farmers (120 participating and 120 non-participating IFAD farmers). Data were collected with two sets of structured questionnaire and analyzed with descriptive statistics, paired t-test and poverty gap analysis. The result indicates that mean ages of IFAD farmers was 47.80 years while that of non IFAD farmers was 49.56 years. The IFAD farmers had ( = 14.4) years of farming experience as against ( = 15.6) years for the non IFAD farmers. The IFAD farmers had ( = 2.5) hectares while non IFAD farmers farmed on ( = 2.1) hectares. The mean annual farm income of IFAD farmers was N201, 441.00, while non IFAD farmers had N187, 432.00. The results of the Paired t-test analysis show that farm size and farm income of IFAD participating farmers were significantly higher than the non IFAD farmers at 1% levels of probability while, variable inputs and farm output where significant at 10% levels of probability. The results of poverty gap analysis showed that 33.33% and 45.21% of the IFAD and non IFAD farmers were poor, respectively, and will require 21.87% and 32.59% to get out of their poverty. Policies aimed at timely supply of farm inputs (since farming is time bound), replication of the programme in other communities and prompt payment of counterpart funds by federal, state and local governments were advocated for sustainable poverty reduction in the study areas

PDF