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Poverty is a major menace in Nigeria, and the onset of COVID-19 complicated the issue by limiting people's economic activities and livelihoods. Thus, there is a need for households to engage in sustainable economic activities to cope with economic shocks. Backyard agriculture could play a critical role in enhancing household income, especially during economic shocks; yet there exists a dearth of empirical information on this. Hence the need for this study, which investigated the effect of backyard agriculture on household income in southeast Nigeria. The study employed a multistage sampling procedure to get to the respondents. The data collected from randomly selected 480 households were analysed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and multiple regression. The study revealed that households that engaged in backyard agriculture had a higher income (N130,125=USD 204.84) than households that did not engage in backyard agriculture (N64,700=USD 101.85). Thus, there is a difference of N65,425 (USD 102.99) between the average income of households that engaged in backyard agriculture and households that did not engage in backyard agriculture. The t-test results indicate that the difference between their income was significant at 1%. The regression result further shows that backyard agriculture significantly increased the income level of households. Thus, backyard agriculture is a crucial tool to enhance household economic status and livelihood during health and economic shocks. Based on these, this study recommends the promotion of backyard agriculture among households to boost household income by the government through agricultural extension agents.

Addition of organic manure to soils improves soil texture, structure and condition (aeration and temperatures) of the soil. Regardless of the importance of organic manure, organic wastes are carelessly dumped at dumpsites and on the streets, with government of the day, showing a lack of capacity to contain them. This underutilized resource can be utilized in urban farming, resulting in the reduction of the ever increasing waste volumes carelessly dumped on the streets by urban households. This paper was aimed at ascertaining the extent of organic waste (manure) use in urban farming and also determine the factors affecting extent of organic waste use in urban farming. Data were collected from Enugu and Nsukka urban centres, Nigeria. From the two centres, 120 household heads that use organic waste in urban farming were randomly selected and used in the study. The results show that extent of organic waste use (poultry and pig manure) was high; indicating that biodegradable organic waste from dumpsites can equally be used in farming, if they are sorted and bagged. Factors that affected extent of organic waste use in urban farming include household heads' number of years spent in formal school, farming experience, gender, occupation, age, income level and farm size. Other factors include price of organic manure, price of chemical fertilizers and availability of organic manure. The results of this study underscore the need for government to explore various cost-effective ways of treating wastes, so that farmers can use wastes from dumpsites more in their farm productions.

It is widely reported that women provide the bulk of food production labour in Africa. Since efficient targeting of improved technologies demands an understanding of who is likely to use them, and new farm technologies have often been inappropriate for women's needs, this paper presents the relative contributions of men and women to food production labour in six major cassava-producing countries of Africa. The paper is based on farm-level information collected within the framework of the Collaborative Study of Cassava in Africa (COSCA). While the number of fields in which women provided more labour for each farm task increased consistently from the initial farm operations, such as land clearing and seedbed preparation, through sowing (planting) and weeding to the final farm operations such as harvesting and transportation, for which women provided more labour for the largest number of fields, the reverse was the case for men. The relative number of households where females provided more field labour than males was higher among female-headed households than among male-headed ones. Such households were characterized by a lower working age male/female ratio, and/or were engaged in tree crop production, which often absorbed male labour. Villages where females provided more field labour than males were more common in remote areas where access to markets was poor and population density sparse, or in countries where men had fled the villages because of political repression. Such villages were also more common among non-Muslim communities than among predominantly Muslim societies. On the whole, however, men contributed more labour in significantly more fields than women in most places. These observations suggest that it could be misleading to generalize that women are providing the bulk of food production labour across Africa. They provide clear evidence of gender division of labour on the farm, and help to explain gender bias in agricultural extension efforts in Africa. Recommendations that pre-harvest extension activities should be mainly directed at women have hardly been heeded. It is recommended that these activities should be targeted at both men and women, but more towards women where men have fled the villages for political reasons or for commercial ones such as poor market access opportunities. ; Peer Review

Since 2014, the Agricultural Sector Support Project (PASA) has been assisting smallholder farmers in Togo with the adoption of Improved Traditional Poultry Farming Technique (ITPFT) in rural areas for wealth creation, food security and poverty alleviation. This paper focuses on comparing the socioeconomic characteristics of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of PASA subsidies. Both random and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 400 farmers. The sample consisted of 86 project beneficiaries and 314 non-beneficiaries. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data. Results of analysis indicated that there is a significant difference in socioeconomic variables such as self-financing capacity, level of education, membership in cooperative societies, household size, farm size, and annual sale of poultry between project beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries prior to the implementation of PASA. Descriptive statistics show that five years after the implementation of PASA, the annual poultry sales per farmer ranged from 0 to 1700 birds for beneficiaries and from 9 to 200 birds for non-beneficiaries. The turnover per farmer ranged from US $ 0 to US $ 42409 and from US $ 33 to US $ 996 for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, respectively. The profit per farmer ranged from US $ 0 to US $ 25446 for beneficiaries and from US $ 26 to US $ 797 for non-beneficiaries. The magnitude of the standard deviations of the potential outcome variables among beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries suggests that adoption rates of ITPFT may vary from one farmer to another. As a result, compared to non-beneficiaries, beneficiaries experienced a greater increase in potential outcomes five years after the implementation of PASA. Failure to comply with improved production technique on certain farms, despite receiving subsidies, is a factor that could negatively impact the effective, efficient, and optimal achievement of the project's expected results. Further research will concentrate on determining the added value of PASA through the use of appropriate and thorough econometric adoption and impact assessment methods.

International audience ; In Benin Republic, teak sector is the most active among the wood markets with a strong national demand. It is therefore necessary to improve its efficiency. This study aimed at modelling the perception and economic performance of teak plant production in some rural nurseries. To this end, a survey was conducted among 140 teak nurseries in northern, central and southern regions of Benin using the "snowball" sampling method. In terviews organized with plant nurserymen served to gather data on their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, plant production techniques, production costs and output, and teak production perception. The perception of producers and the performance of teak plant production were modeled respectively from a logistic regression model and then from a linear regression model. The analysis of the results showed that the age of the nurseryman, unlike variables such as gender and seniority in production, negatively influences the economic performance of teak plant production. Household size also influences the economic performance of teak plant production and the perception of the nurseryman, but with a negative effect on the last variable. Nevertheless, the number of years of schooling and the nurseryman's assessment of the distance between the plant nursery and his home has a positive influence on his perception. Policies development aimed at improving the production of teak plants in Benin would therefore require particular attention to these different determinants.