| The purpose of this study is to assess ways of intensifying crop and livestock production in Katsina state through an examination of farm level reorganization of resources and activities in the integrated crop-livestock system. Data were collected from 120 households in six villages of the state using structured questionnaire. The tools of analysis used wer e simple descriptive statistics; farm business analysis, profit function and Linear and mixed programming models. Households in the study area operated under a relatively secure tenurial arrangement as most of them owned the plot of land they cultivated, In terms of household labour supply, about 56%, 66% and 66% of the household members in zones 1, 2 and 3 respectively were capable of providing the family labour force. The farming systems in all the zones were still relatively traditional as most of the households relied heavily on work bulls and hand implements. Crops produced were predominantly cereal and legume based. Work bulls were kept mainly for cultivation purposes while sheep and goats were kept mainly for meeting household cash needs. Manure is becoming increasingly important for soil improvement in the study area due to the high cost of inorganic fertilizers. There were about 59%, 17% and 46% increases in gross margins of the integrated systems over the crop-based production systems of zones 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Efficiency of resource utilization wa s higher for the integrated crop-livestock systems than the crop-based systems of zones 1 and 3 while the reverse wa s the case in zone 2. The crop-based production systems were relatively more capital intensive in production while the integrated systems were relatively more labour intensive. The integrated farms in zones 1 and 3 were technically and economically more efficient than the corresponding cropbased farms. The optimum farm plans of the basic models show that higher productivity and more revenue could be achieved by reorganizing resources and activities in the integrated crop-Avestock production systems. Crop wa s the major source of farm income in the integrated crop-livestock systems. Land wa s the most limiting resource in both production systems. Labour wa s a constraint to production in the peak labour demand periods of May-August and September-December. When land wa s not limiting, but capital and labour were restricted, crop-based production systems were more favoured in terms of efficiency of land utilization. As labour became limiting at a given level of land, livestock size and capital, the livestock activities were reduced or eliminated from the optimum plan. The inference from the results of the sensitivity analysis is that integrated crop-livestock production systems favour a low-resource bas e situation. Policy choice should therefore be geared towards tackling the constraints that would militate against the achievement of optimum benefit from integrated crop-livestock production system. |
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