Sustainability of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Practices (GHGERPs) Usage: Evidence from Commercial Chicken Farms in Nigeria

Production of chicken in Nigeria moved to a larger scale with the ban of poultry product importation in the 2002. This has triggered the emission of greenhouse gases; resulting to environmental degradation due to climate change. An increased in chicken production and the droppings from commercial farms have a direct relationship with the greenhouse gas emission and this constitutes a major source of both environmental, social and health issues. This necessitates the reduction practices of greenhouse gas emission among commercial chicken farms. Therefore, this study assessed the sustainability of such practices in commercial chicken production with a view to unvailing the sustainability status of farms with respect to the practices. Structured and validated questionnaire with a reliability value of 0.72 was used to collect the cross-sectional data used for the study, through a two-stage sampling procedure to sample 349 commercial chicken farms in north central and south west geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Sustainability index and binary logistic regression were used to analyze the data. Test of significance were carried out at 5% level. The findings showed that the mean sustainability index of 0.47 was not sustainable as most of the farms practices of reducing greenhouse emission were categorized as unsustainable. However, it was observed that access to credit; capital investment and size of farms were the significant determinants of the level of sustainability at 95% level of probability. It was recommended that government should encourage more investment in chicken production and facilitate access to credit in order to improve the status of sustainable greenhouse gas emission reduction practices.