The Needed Practices by Crop Farmers in Green Manuring for Maintaining Soil Fertility for Sustainable Food Security in Enugu State, Nigeria
Keywords:
sustainable food security, crop farmers, soil fertility, green manuring, practicesAbstract
This paper x-rayed practices needed by crop farmers in green manuring for maintaining soil fertility for sustainable food security in Enugu State, Nigeria. Three specific objectives were developed for the study. Three research questions guided the study. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for this study. The target population of the study was 449 registered crop farmers. The population of the respondents was 320. The sample of the study was 133 respondents. A random sampling technique was used to select 84 teachers of agricultural science while the entire population of the extension workers was used. A 35- Green Manure Practices Questionnaire (GMPQ) items was developed from literature and used for data collection. The instrument was subjected to face and content validation by three experts. Cronbach Alpha reliability method was adopted to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire items. A reliability of 0.88 was obtained. One hundred and thirty-three copies of the questionnaire were administered to the respondents while one hundred and twenty-six copies were retrieved and analyzed using mean and standard deviation. The result of this study showed that 9 plants serve as green manure in Enugu State, 12 practices are needed by crop farmers in utilizing green manure as a sole crop and 10 practices as an intercrop for maintaining soil fertility in Enugu State. It was recommended that the identified plants and practices should be utilized by extension workers in retraining farmers for maintaining soil fertility and so on.
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