Ekpa, D.^1,, Oyekale, A.S.², Oladele, O.I²

The current state of poverty in Nigeria is alarming and climate change threatens food security and increases poverty directly and indirectly. This research established a link that exists between climate smart agricultural practices and poverty status of small household farmers in North-West geopolitical zone of Nigeria; and based on this, examined climate smart agricultural practices and poverty status of small holder farming households in the zone. The specific objective of the study was to determine factors influencing indicators of climate smart agricultural practices on crop enterprise in the study area. Multi-stage, purposive and random sampling techniques were used to select three hundred (300) farming households in the study area, and using a set of pre-tested structured questionnaires, relevant data were collected. The study employed Ordinary Least Square (OLS), regression models to ascertain the objective. The regression analysis of maize enterprise shows that age, gender, marital status and household size were significant (p < 0.10), with age positively significant inferring that a unit increase in age will result in corresponding increase in the practice of climate smart agriculture for maize enterprise by 0.0264; also, the results showed that many more male farmers used climate smart agriculture in the maize enterprise than their female counterparts by 0.6001. Education, housing materials, lack of time and State option were significant (p < 0.01). The study concludes that crop production is greatly influenced by climate Smart Agriculture in the study area. The results suggest that those who had informal education (Arabic education) had significantly lower indices of climate smart agriculture for maize production than their counterparts who had formal education primary, secondary and tertiary. Housing material was also negatively significant (p < 0.01), meaning that the farmers with mud/thatched and mud/zinc houses had significantly lower usage of climate smart agriculture in the production of maize when compare with those with brick/zinc and concrete block zinc houses. The study concludes that socio economic variables influenced climate Smart Agriculture in the study area. It therefore recommends that women be encouraged to develop interest in climate smart agricultural farming activities through women empowerment programmes instituted by government and private bodies because men dominate the climate smart agricultural practices in the study area; Government, Non-Governmental Organizations and farmer associations should create a conducive learning environment to encourage the farmers of climate smart agriculture in the study area to embrace formal education which can improve their performance rapidly; and finally, policy on informal education should be enriched and developed in the curriculum to meet the current climate smart agricultural challenges.

climate, smart, agriculture and poverty in north-west Nigeria