Abstract
The study investigated the pastoral effects on crop production and sought to find resolutions to incessant clashes between crop farmers and pastoralists in South West, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 608 crop farmers and 60 pastoralists from 38 villages in three of Nigeria’s Southwest States: Ogun (11), Osun (12) and Oyo (15) based on dominance of pastoralists activities. Structured interview schedules were used to collect data on personal characteristics, pastoralists’ activities, enterprise combinations and effects of pastoralists’ activities on maize crop production. Data were subjected to means, Pearson Product Moment Correlation, Chi-Square and Regression analysis at 5% level of significance. Results showed that among crop farmers and pastoralists 50.3% and 60% respectively, had no formal education. The mean farm size was 2.1ha while mean flock size for pastoralists was 37cattle. Therefore, big farm size of pastoralists was a limiting factor to production of maize crops. The major problems caused by pastoralists’ activities were: destruction of crops, defecation of cattle on roads, contamination of streams, indiscriminate bush burning, pastoralists’ resistant to harassment from villagers, harassment of female villagers by pastoralist and over grazing of farmland. Significant relationships existed between household composition (? 2 = 26.36; p < 0.05) of crop farmers and effects of pastoralists activities on crop production. The coefficient of loss due to pastoralists’ activities and hazards associated with pastoralists’ activities were negative and significant. This study recommended the pastoralists should be empowered by the introduction of farmers’ field school, diversification of enterprise combination and provision of functional grazing reserve with adequate watering points in order to minimize pastoral effect on cropped land.
