Tadasu Tsuruta

Rural women’s farmers access to productive resources: the moderating effect of culture among Nupe and Yoruba in Nigeria

BackgroundThis paper analyzes ownership and control of productive resources by gender as determined by culture. This is premised on the fact that past researchers have isolated gender and productive resources on one hand and gender and culture on the other. In this paper, the novelty is the exploration of the interplay among culture, gender and productive resources. Using a descriptive quantitative research design, a simple random sampling was used to select 100 households from a sampling frame of 200 households generated through house listing in three villages from Patigi Local Government Area of Kwara State. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire covering ownership, and decision making on selected productive resources and analyzed using Frequency counts, percentages and Chi-square test statistics based on the fact that the variables are categorical. Gender and ownership as well as decision making were cross-tabulated and then layered with culture as a third variable.ResultsThe results were disaggregated along Nupe and Yoruba culture as well as along gender lines for the selected productive resources covered in this paper. Men predominate in ownership of productive resources among Yoruba than Nupe culture. Women from Nupe culture had higher distribution of ownership in the productive resources than men particularly land, small livestock and non-mechanized farm equipment. The results further show higher proportion of ownership of productive resources among men in Yoruba culture. Women in Nupe culture had greater proportion of ownership of productive resources than Yoruba women. Males make decision to sell all productive resources except small livestock and also make decision in almost all the farming activities listed except when and who will take crop to the market in both Nupe and Yoruba cultures.ConclusionCulture has a stronger influence on women’s access and control of productive resources than the mere biological differentiation of gender into male and female. There is a strong cultural influence among Nupe and Yoruba women as a result of the interplay of gender, ownership and decision making and culture on selected productive resources.

The Impasse of Contemporary Agro-pastoralism in Central Tanzania: Environmental Pressures in the Face of Land Scarcity and Commercial Agricultural Investment

This chapter explores the transformation of agro-pastoralism in semi-arid Tanzania. As the semi-nomadic way of ‘traditional’ agro-pastoralism became infeasible nowadays, the bulk of rural population resides permanently in densely populated villages, and many villagers have ceased to keep livestock, having come to depend on agriculture, which is highly unstable in a semi-arid climate. At the same time, villagers have increasingly engaged in other income-generating measures, many of which are dependent upon dwindling forest resources. Land is now concentrated in the hands of a small number of wealthy cattle owners, due to a growing scarcity of grazing land. A shortage of rangeland is further exacerbated by rapid expansion of commercial maize farms, which is partly enhanced by the agricultural modernization policy of the Tanzanian government which allows easier access to imported tractors and agricultural loans. Expansion of farmlands has put a considerable amount of pressure on the environment, leading to rapid deforestation and active soil erosion. (155)