Gender Assessment of Climate Smart Agricultural Practices (CSAPs) and Technical Efficiency of Cassava Farmers in Ogun State

Despite the promise and attractiveness of CSAPs, climate-related shocks still pose a huge threat to agricultural sector and food security and affects men, women, boys, and girls in different ways. This study examined the effects of CSAPs on the technical efficiency of cassava-based farmers by gender. A multistage sampling procedure was used to select 100 female and 140 male cassava farmers. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and stochastic production function. The result revealed that cover cropping, mixed farming and mixed cropping were used across gender. The adoption of CSAPs across the gender was very low with less than 40% and 35% for males and females respectively. The factors that significantly increased (p<0.05) cassava production among female farmers were herbicide, fertilizer and land area, while pesticide and rodenticide reduced production. In addition, cassava stem, herbicide, rodenticide and land area significantly increased (p<0.05) the cassava production among male farmers. Also, cover cropping (p<0.10), mulching (p<0.01) and afforestation (p<0.01) were the CSAPs that significantly increased the efficiency of female cassava farmers. Cover cropping (p<0.01), mixed farming (p<0.05), crop rotation (p<0.01), organic manure (p<0.01), afforestation (p<0.01) and intercropping (p<0.01) were the CSAPs that significantly increased efficiency of male cassava-based farmers. It was concluded that efforts to improve the efficiency of the cassava-based farmers in Ogun State via CSAPs should be gender sensitive. There is the need to educate the cassava farmers on the benefits of CSAPs to boost the adoption of CSAPs across the gender.