Resource degradation, agricultural change, and sustainability in farming systems of southeastern Nigeria
Goldman, A.
Diversity, farmer knowledge, and sustainability: 246-272
1992
Document Number: 338884
This study examines some aspects of agricultural and resource management systems in southeastern Nigeria, where the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture's (IITA) Resource and Crop Management Program has undertaken a series of research projects. Among them was a survey of resource management practices in areas with differing levels of population density but similar ecological and cultural conditions. The aim of the study is to examine the threats to sustainability in this region and the ways in which farmers have addressed them. Various forms of resource degradation are reported, including declines in soil productivity, in the quality, diversity, and availability of fallow vegetation, and in the diversity of planted crop species. Shortened fallow periods play a key role in this process, especially in this agro-ecological zone where the fallow period is essential to the soil-vegetation system. However, farmers have devised and adopted a variety of means of coping with and retarding resource declines, ranging from discrete practices to entire subsystems in which intensive resource management and input use are concentrated in particular sites.