ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF BALANCED NUTRIENT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES FOR MAIZE PRODUCTION IN KADUNA STATE, NIGERIA

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Date
2005-08
Authors
OGBODO, UGBABE, OMADACHI
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Abstract
ABSTRACT In Kaduna State Nigeria (Northern Guinea Savannah), three improved maizebased technologies have been tested since 2000 in a series of farmer-managed field trials. The first technology is a continuous maize treatment mainly characterised by high fertilizer rates (SG 2000). In the second technology, half of the fertilizer quantity is replaced by organic manure (BNMS-manure). The third technology, a soybean-maize rotation treatment with the fertilizer rates to the maize reduced by half also (BNMSsoybean/ maize). The broad objective of this study was to conduct economic analysis of the three introduced BNMS maize-based technologies with the farmers’ own practice of maize production. The specific objectives of the study were to: determine the costs and returns to the BNMS technologies and farmers’ practice; determine the optimum farm plans for the technologies at farmers’ level and to examine the farmers’ perception of the BNMS technologies. The study relied on both primary and secondary data. The primary data were collected by interviewing the participating farmers by means of questionnaires. The secondary data were mainly on types and rates of fertilizers applied, seed rates and type planted, and data on other vital areas of the introduced technology gotten from the BNMS programme manual. The tools used for analysis of the data were: partial budget analysis to determine the costs and returns to the introduced BNMS technologies and farmers’ practice; linear programming technique to determine the optimum farm plans for the technologies at farmers’ level and the scoring technique to examine the farmers’ perception of the BNMS technologies. - 7 - Findings from the partial budget analysis showed that, BNMS-soybean/maize was the best in both the demonstration and adaptation trials by having the highest gross margins of N18,462 and N19,785 per hectare respectively, with the inorganic fertilizer cost constituting over 50% of the total production cost. BNMS-soybean/maize practice was accepted in the optimum farm plan at 1.51 hectare of land resource usage, while the three remaining maize practices were rejected. Operating capital was the most limiting of the resources at N50,000 per hectare. Farmers’ practice came out of the linear programming analysis also as the least efficient of the four maize-based technologies because if it is forced into the optimum farm plan, the farmer will suffer a very high loss of over N40,000 because of its very low returns. The farmers gave overall best perception to both the BNMS-soybean/maize and the BNMS-manure technologies. Some key recommendations based on findings from the study are: (i) That farmers should be enlightened to adopt the maize after soybean practice because of its profitability; (ii) There should be favourable policy that would boost the adoption of new varieties of soybean through efforts to support agricultural research in developing new and high yielding varieties; (iii) Government should provide the enabling environment for investors to establish fertilizer blending plants to bring down the prices of inorganic fertilizers.
Description
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS AND RURAL SOCIOLOGY FACULTY OF AGRICULTURE AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY ZARIA, NIGERIA.
Keywords
ECONOMIC,, ANALYSIS,, BALANCED,, NUTRIENT,, MANAGEMENT,, TECHNOLOGIES,, MAIZE,, PRODUCTION,, KADUNA,, STATE,, NIGERIA.
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