Survey of Incentives Development in Agroforestry Establishments in Yewa North Local Government, Gun State

Abstract

A survey of incentive development in agroforestry establishments in Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State was conducted. Villages around Forest Reserve Areas were randomly selected namely; Igbogila – Ayetoro, Imala – Ayetoro, Idafo, Ajoda – Ayetoro, Ibese – Igbogila and Oke Akanni. A well structured eighty (80) questionnaires was administered to a total of eighty (80) farmers in the area.
The number of respondents in Igbogila – Ayetoro, Imala – Ayetoro, Idafo, Ajoda – Ayetoro, Ibese – Igbogila and Oke Akanni were 10, 14, 7, 17 and 13 respectively based on the population of each village. In all, 61 respondents were available to give information on kinds of incentive received, sources of incentives, mode of land acquisition,its benefit of incentives, problem encountered and many others. Descriptive analysis was used to analyse the data.
The result shows that 70.4% of men were engaged in agroforestry practices with little or no education. Majority of the farmers in the area are between the ages of 30 – 41 years which is the productive age. They engage in the agroforestry system in order to cater for their families. The sources of incentives provided for the farmers were majorly from the local government (52.46%) and cooperatives (19.6) 50.82% of fertilizer and seedlings as well as 18.03% of financial assistance are given to farmers by the local government .These incentives give the farmers job opportunity (32.79%), income (39.34%), and food (26.23%) among others.
It is therefore recommended that incentives in the area of inputs should be used to support the establishment of Agroforestry system so as to boost food production and wood supply across the country.

Key words: Incentives, agroforestry, forest reserve, food production, wood supply