Energy Use Pattern in Millet Production in Semi-Arid Zone of Nigeria

Agriculture is an important economic sector in Nigeria, although the country depends heavily on the oil industry for its budgetary revenues. Approximately 70 percent of the population engages in agricultural production at a subsistence level. Even though, the agriculture related activities holdings are generally small scale. Agriculture provided 41 percent of Nigeria's total gross domestic product (GDP) in 1999. This percentage represented a normal decrease of 24.7 percent from its contribution of 65.7 percent to the GDP in 1957. The decrease will continue because of the fact that when economic development occurs, the relative size of the agricultural sector usually decreases (Abdullahi et al., 2006). Nigeria's wide range of climate variations allows it to produce a variety of food crops. The staple food crops include cassava, yams, sweet potatoes, coco-yams, corn, cowpeas, beans, millet, rice, wheat, sorghum, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Efficient use of energy is one of the principal requirements of sustainable agriculture. Energy use in agriculture has been increasing in response to increasing population, limited availability of arable land, and a desire for higher standards of living. Therefore, energy is one of the most valuable inputs in agricultural production. It is invested in various forms such as mechanical (farm machines, human power, and animal draft), chemical fertilizer (pesticides and herbicides) and electrical. The amount of energy used in agricultural production, processing and distribution needs to be adequate in order to feed the rising population and to meet other social and economic goals (Stout, 1990). Because of the subsistence nature of the millet production in the study area, most of farmers mainly produce the crop using only manual energy. Very few farmers use tractors for tillage during the land preparation stage. Apart from this single mechanical energy use, all other farm operations are executed using manual energy or animal traction. This trend of limited mechanisation is common to other crops grown in the country. Therefore, less energy input has being the case crop production like millet. Because of the lack of data on energy expenditure and benefits associated with energy analysis in the production of millet. Also information on comparative use of different energies is also lacking. And most of the producers do not have enough knowledge on the most efficient energy inputs. Consequently, it is neither possible to identify viable energy inputs and options in the production process nor plan for their conservation. Under these situations, an input–output energy analysis provides planners and policy makers an opportunity to evaluate economic interactions of energy use. This information is required in