Agrarian rural dwellers in Nigeria produce about 95% of locally grown food commodities. The low accessibility to and affordability of orthodox medicine by rural dwellers and their need to keep healthy to be economically productive, have led to their dependence on traditional medicine. This paper posits an increasing acceptance of traditional medicine country-wide and advanced reasons for this trend. The fact that traditional medicine practitioners' concept of disease is on a wider plane vis-à-vis orthodox medicine practitioners' has culminated in some socio-cultural and magico-religious practices observed in preparation and use of plant medicines for farmers' health management. Possible scientific reasons were advanced for some of these practices to show the nexus between traditional medicine and orthodox medicine. The paper concludes that the psychological aspect of traditional medicine are reflected in its socio-cultural and magico-religious practices and suggests that government should fund research into traditional medicine to identify components of it that can be integrated into the national health system.

This study analyzed the compound growth rate (CGR) and the contributions of yield and area to cassava production output in Nigeria. During the period, TE1970 – TE2018, production followed an upward trajectory from 9.3 million tonnes (1970) to 59.5 million tonnes (2018) while yield oscillated between 7.9tonnes/ha (TE2014) and 11.9tonnes/ha (TE2010). At this period, the CGR per year for yield declined (-0.2%), harvested area increased (10.9%) and production increased (10.6%). The decomposition analysis for the period revealed that, increase in output was largely due to expansion of harvested area (152%) while the interaction between area and yield effect declined production output by 45.8%. Regrettably, during the period, cassava yield also declined production output by 5.8%. The study also found that harvested area has the highest instability index (11.8). In order to further increase and sustain cassava production in Nigeria, intense planting of high yield cassava stems instead of solely expanding cropped area is recommended.

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Smallholder livestock farmers in Nigeria utilize traditional medicines derived from medicinal plants (PMs) for the maintenance of their animals' health. This study was designed to determine the PMs used in the study area and their level of utilization by livestock farmers, compare the level of utilization of PMs across the three states surveyed and identify the socio-economic factors influencing farmer's utilization of PMs. Thirty-five PMs were identified. Farmers had considerable knowledge about the identified PMs but about 80.0% of them used the PMs to poor/moderate extent. There were statistical differences in the utilization level of PMs among the three states. Six socio-economic variables were found to be statistically significant in influencing PMs' utilization. Farmer's age, household size, distance to the nearest veterinary hospital/clinic and extent of travels, had positive effects while negative effects were exhibited by farm income and number of heads of livestock. It was concluded that there was considerable knowledge about PMs and that utilization of PMs varied between the three states. It was recommended that local knowledge of PMs be preserved in the study area through screening and documentation.

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Purpose. There are sufficient evidences in the literature that welfare of food producers and consumers is easily compromised due to unfavorable food price volatility dynamics. Therefore, this study investigates the volatility dynamics in food price index returns (FPIRE-TURNS), imported food price index returns (CIFCPIRETURNS), price of dollars at bureau de change (BDCRETURNS) and inter-bank rate (EXRETURNS).

Despite various initiatives and investments in youth entrepreneurship and start-ups, youth participation in agribusiness has not significantly increased. Therefore, this study analyzed the perceived effects of entrepreneurial traits on youth’s willingness to exploit agribusiness opportunities in Nigeria. A total of 3600 respondents were randomly selected across Nigeria using an online well-structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using a binomial logistic regression among other tools. The study found that, although only 17% of the respondents were exploiting agribusiness opportunities as of 2020, about 77% of the respondents were willing to exploit agribusiness opportunities in the next 2 years. The study found that entrepreneurial traits had no significant influence on youth’s willingness to exploit agribusiness opportunities until each of the traits was moderated by an individual’s entrepreneurial intention. The implications of the findings are discussed in the study.