Sustainability and Determinate of Farmers’ Mitigation Strategies to Greenhouse Gases Emission: a case in Rice Agric-Food System of Nigeria

Abstract

Sustainable production refers to the production that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. At global level and mainly across Nigeria, rice fields are considered as one of the most important sources of atmospheric concentration of two greenhouse gases mainly anthropogenic methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. These Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) are produced under anaerobic conditions, and its production has negative environmental and health implication. Additionally, the growing demand for rice across Nigeria exceeds supply, resulting in a rice deficit. To overcome this challenge, rice production should be increased, with so much regard to less GHGs emission. Moving forward, understanding the determinate of farmers' mitigation strategies to GHGs will definitely enhance effort made for farmers to continue to mitigate easily overtime. Incidentally, an empirical study on the present discourse is relatively scanty, isolated, and devoid of in-depth and quantitative analyses. These create a gap in research and make it extremely difficult if not impossible for the government/interest group to know the method they can adopt in helping farmers mitigate the negative impact of GHGs emission in rice production. It was against this backdrop that this study was systematically undertaken.