Abstract:
The study focused on farming Practices predisposing Agro-ecological Degradation, Poverty Level and Farmer Education Imperatives among Smallholder Farmers in Northern Cross River State. A survey research design was adopted for the study. Twenty one (21) Extension Agents and 221 Registered smallholder Farmers were randomly sampled in proportion to local government areas constituting the zone to make up the study sample. A structured questionnaire was the instrument for data collection. The instrument was face validated by three experts from the Department of Vocational Teacher Education (Agricultural Education Unit); University of Nigeria, Nsukka and found to be reliable with a co-efficient of 0.860 obtained through split half technique and Cronbach Alpha Co-efficient method. Four research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. Mean and Standard Deviation were used to answer the research questions. t-test Statistic was used to test hypotheses 1 and 3, while Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to test hypothesis 2 at .05 level of significance. It was found that frequent farming practices of farmers lead to agro-ecological degradation and level of poverty among smallholder farmers in the study area was high. A positive relationship existed between poverty level and agro-ecological degradation practices of farmers. It was recommended that deliberate prohibitions should be placed on agro-ecological practices such as bush burning and deforestation and government afforestation policies pursued with vigor and farmers should be exposed to varied agricultural enterprises as well as non-agricultural alternatives. Furthermore, workshops and seminars should be organized for farmers on improved agronomic practices to reduce agro-ecological degradation while farmer education programmes through extension education should be repositioned and incentives provided to motivate Extension Agents to reside in rural communities with farmers to timely identify their farm problems and proffer instantaneous solutions.
