Search

Sub-Saharan African countries have been projected to be under severe climate threat in the form of a rise in climate variability. Such variability will impact on agriculture in particular and hence challenge rural livelihoods and potentially rural and urban food security. Nigeria makes an ideal case study country in which to assess the impacts of climate variability, the understanding and perceptions of smallholders to climate changes and their approaches to climate smart good agricultural practices. It also provides an opportunity to evaluate the appropriateness of assistance smallholders are receiving through extension. This study aimed to intensify and to further improve the empirical understanding of the socioeconomic, biophysical and institutional factors that contribute to climate change variability and vulnerability among farming households and communities in Nigeria. The study also aimed to promote a better understanding of climate-smart Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) to achieve environmentally, economically and socially sustainable agricultural practices in order to contribute to improved livelihoods and incomes in the face of climate change challenges. A secondary aim was to evaluate the potential of participatory action planning as a way of sharing knowledge and experiences between smallholders and those who work with them (e.g. extension services) against a constantly changing environment. These research aims were applied to arable smallholder farming systems in South-West Nigeria as a case in point. By integrating participatory methods, statistical analyses and household surveys, this research adopted a multistage approach to examine and understand smallholder farming systems, livelihoods and perceptions of a changing climate. As part of the study, the Vulnerability Framework to understand smallholders' vulnerability and adaptive capacity was used. This focused on the impacts of climate change as perceived by smallholder farmers and the adaptive approaches ranging from individual households to government programmes and policies executed to reduce smallholders' vulnerability to climate challenges and to increase smallholders' resilience to predicted future climate change. The study showed that smallholder farmers are very aware of their local environment and how the environmental changes are affecting their livelihoods. Farmers stated that the perceived changes in climatic variables like temperature and rainfall have been occurring in the area over a period of three decades. This was confirmed by the evidence from the temperature and rainfall data obtained from the national weather site and local weather stations. The study further showed that despite the change in climatic conditions, smallholders have employed a few on-farm and off-farm adaptation strategies such as changing the planting calendar, livelihood diversification and crop diversification among others to reduce their vulnerability to the changing conditions. However, the study shows that cultural barriers, financial constraints, limited access to improved crop varieties, lack of financial support from the government, poor access to information on climate smart adaptation strategies and the lack of confidence in, and insufficient access to the advice given by extension workers are among the challenges linked to non-adoption of some good agricultural practices. Another key finding is that the existing extension and research extension model is not working. There is a need to recognise that for extension to be effective, it needs to embrace indigenous knowledge and integrate this with physical science. With limited resources for extension, this thesis reinforces calls for the provision of institutional support like access to adequate and regular extension services and an increase in the number of extension workers; however, the study also shows the need for a reinforcement in updating and the training of extension workers not only in technical knowledge on current innovations in climate smart farming in order to disseminate the right information to boost farmers' confidence in the advice given but also in social interaction behaviour with participatory processes and strong feedbacks. One way this could be done is by extension officers with the support of research working on participatory training and strategies to review it and learn from it collectively followed by feedback to government to inform policy. Finally, further research should include how smallholder farmers' can be encouraged to adopt good agricultural practices through further participatory processes including participatory action planning for cropping systems and seasons.

In recent years growing attention has been given to use of ICT and adoption of improved technologies within the farming setting in both developed and developing countries. In the developing world this is generally in order to tackle low agricultural productivity amongst smallholders who are the major producers of food crops and to foster their adoption of GAP technologies to meet the food needs of ever-increasing populations. However, traditional approaches to knowledge exchange and extension has limitations in many countries. Given its potential amongst rural farmers, combined mobile phone-SMS text reminders and GAP participatory training could significantly promote greater adoption amongst farmers. Little is known about this unique approach in facilitating farmer adoption of GAP technologies in developing economies and, specifically, no Nigerian study has been found that examines such a role amongst rural communities. The principal aim was to evaluate smallholder uptake of Good Agricultural Practices and whether tactical use of ICT (SMS text reminders) can improve adoption of practices to enhance the effectiveness of extension to farmers. Secondly, the study sought to evaluate the use of ICT in relation to market communications. After a critical review of smallholder farming, extension and the use of ICT in communications, focus group discussions, household survey questionnaires and an in-depth constructivist case study were used. As such the study can be categorised as a participatory research methods using mixed methods triangulation strategy to address the study aims and objectives. Field studies in Nigeria involved three phases: After introducing the purpose of the study to two communities, the first phase focused on baseline livelihoods survey and an evaluation of farming practices. From the two closely related communities (Bassawa and Shika) in northern Nigeria, a total of 200 smallholder farmers were selected for the survey. The communities were located close together; however, in 2012 the Bassawa community had benefited from the NAERLS Adopted Village Concept community initiative. The second phase focused on GAP participatory training, the development of a lead-farmer extension model, extension visits, SMS text reminders, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with both extension workers and farmers. The third phase included evaluation survey questionnaires of the effectiveness of GAP participatory training, impact of SMS text reminders and barriers to adoption of GAP technologies. In addition, the use of SMS linked to market strategies was reviewed. Whilst quantitative data were analysis using SPSS and descriptive statistics, qualitative data were thematically analysed. Overall, this study found that 13 GAP technologies were fully adopted, and the interviews as well as the evaluating survey provided a richer understanding of the motivating factors that triggered the adoption. These included GAP participatory training, access to timely information via SMS text reminders, access to extension visits and trust invested in the lead farmers. The study also found that the farmers who received SMS reminders estimated that they had a 42% increase in their agricultural productivity as a result of GAP intervention in the community. The thesis also identified a couple of barriers influencing extension delivery and found that mobile phones can be tactically used to support traditional extension and communication. To address the identified barriers to smallholders improving the sustainability of their agricultural practices there is the need for a radical reform in agricultural extension in Nigeria. The focus of this reform should consider building capacity in good agricultural practices in extension staff and lead farmers so that they can disseminate such practices. Throughout, such capacity building should seek to empower decision making in farmers. In order to address the high farmer to extension worker ratios, there is a need to extend rural ICT facilities and link extension staff to lead farmers while encouraging clusters of farmers around each lead farmer. In addition to facilitated training, the use of timely reminders via SMS has the potential to improve uptake of practices. The thesis develops a new model for mobile technology supporting traditional extension approaches in order to improve extension services to smallholder farmers in Nigeria. Currently, the extension officer ratio to famers in Nigeria is 1:3000, however, the new model revealed that if each extension officer has a portfolio of 300 lead farmers working with them and each lead farmer has 10 trainee farmers locally, then extension officer is directly communicating with 300 farmers and indirectly contacting 3000 smallholder farmers. Moreover, if the extension officer then have the ability to communicate with these smallholder farmers through Mobile phone technology as supposed to travelling to villages by car or motorcycle considering the restriction of bad roads network. Then the extension officer can remind farmers on what to do via contact of the lead farmers through SMS text. This actually means instantaneously all the farmers would get the text message at the right time. Meanwhile, extension visit to smallholder farmers in the villages would take the officer more than two weeks.

Dryland smallholders of Nigeria have successfully lived with environmental challenges and past experiences will help prepare them for future climatic variations. However, predicted changes will exceed collective experiences, and these communities are thus more likely to be at risk. This work focused on co-developing science-informed Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) with smallholders as mitigative and adaptive solutions for resilience to climate changes. Mixed methods were employed; including: a Delphi study of GAPs with experts; baseline survey of smallholders' existing practices; in-depth interviews; focus group discussions; pre-and post-participatory training surveys; Theory of Planned Behaviour survey and stakeholder engagement. Data were collected from a total of 220 respondents in two drylands communities (Kofa and Zango- hotter and drier) in North-West Nigeria. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Multiple Regression. Qualitative data were thematically analysed using Nvivo. Zango households perceived increased temperatures while Kofa households perceived reduced rainfall and drought as the signs of climatic fluctuations; farmers lacked water and soil fertility management practices important for resilience promotion. The pre- and post-co-learning surveys indicated improved confidence to manage environmental challenges leading to resilience. Attitude towards behaviour and subjective norm were the most important determinants of intention (p < 0.05) to adapt to environmental change in Kofa while only attitude was important in Zango. Thus, households were more likely to integrate adaptation into their farming practices when the climate is perceived to be changing. Extension knowledge gaps exist and a new model of extension was proposed; however, fatalistic belief in God as the cause of climate and environmental change could leave the communities vulnerable. The original contributions of this thesis include the development of a framework for transitioning vulnerable farmers to be more resilient, and the farmer segmentation model. Further studies are needed to consider detailed exploration of farmer behaviour towards decision-making for adaptation.

The study has defined the position with regard to existing and evolving United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) legislation, world trade agreements and institutions, global trade in chicken meat and market Quality Assurance (QA) standards in a series of peer-reviewed published papers and working papers. The development of global food supply chains can be a key driver in the harmonisation of international legislation, product and private assurance standards. Indeed compliance with legislation and retailer requirements has been a key market driver in the development of private assurance standards. The key objectives of the research were to examine current assurance schemes within the integrated poultry meat supply chain and the influence of regulation and external market drivers within the integrated poultry meat supply chain; develop and test a QA model for the poultry meat supply chain with a view to both baseline and higher level standards including the development of a business benchmarking system utilising a pre-requisite programme (PRP) and key performance indicators (KPI); and to assess the ability of the QA model to deliver regulatory and policy compliance whilst meeting varied business and market needs for an internationally traded product. This study has shown that a QA model is capable of providing a framework within which the poultry meat supply chain can operate. The legislative and performance requirements have been translated into quantifiable performance indicators which can be used to measure supply chain performance. This can assist differentiation of products at the point of consumption and give a quantifiable measure of the extrinsic value that has been added. This approach will therefore aid the communication of the benefits of differing methods of poultry meat production and afford the consumer the opportunity to make a more informed choice when purchasing meat products.