Assessment of agroforestry farmers’ wellbeing in Edo State, Nigeria

The need to conserve the environment in the course of farming activities necessitates the practice of agroforestry. The effect of its practice on the wellbeing of the farmers needs to be assessed. This study assessed agroforestry farmers’ wellbeing in Edo State. Purposive sampling was used to select 3 forest enclaves in Edo State from which 120 respondents were randomly sampled. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The mean age was 45.6±13.0 years with mean household size of 5.0±2.4 persons and mean farm size of 8.4±2.1 hectares. Majority (85.8%) of the respondents were male, married (78.3%), Christian (71.1%) and had formal education (84.2%). Majority (65.8%) engaged in agroforestry farming as primary occupation, while 34.2% engaged in agroforestry farming as secondary occupation. Source of income (60.0%) and food (39.2%) were the main reasons for respondents’ involvement in agroforestry. Major constraints faced by respondents were low access to loan and problem of mechanisation. The study shows that respondents’ mean score of economic, material, social and psychological wellbeing were 1.806, 1.814, 1.095 and 1.022 respectively. There was significant relationship between reasons for farmers’ involvement in agroforestry and economic wellbeing (χ 2 =76.27, p≤0.001), material wellbeing (χ 2 =93.77, p≤0.001), social wellbeing (χ 2 =73.00, p≤0.001), psychological wellbeing (χ 2 =132.63, p≤0.001) and overall wellbeing (χ 2 =98.68, p≤0.001). A negative relationship existed between constraints and agroforestry farmers’ wellbeing. The study recommends that constraints such as poor mechanisation, difficulty in accessing loan and poor transportation be attended to in order to enhance farmers’ wellbeing. Farmers should be organised into associations to have considerable access to soft loans.