Promoting Urban Agriculture: A case of Cabbage – Lettuce Production under Irrigation in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study focused on promoting urban agriculture through the production of Cabbage-Lettuce under irrigation in Jos North Local Government of Plateau States. Multi stage sampling procedure was used in the selection of 78 respondents who mainly grow vegetable on rivers banks within the study area. Questionnaires were used to collect data from the selected farmers. Data collected were analyzed using gross margin and stochastic frontier model. The gross margin revealed that Cabbage-Lettuce is profitable with gross margin of N19,419 and N20,300 for cabbage and lettuce respectively while the profitability index showed that for each naira invested, farmers made N0.46 and N0.49 for Cabbage and Lettuce respectively. Resultsfurther showed that the estimated coefficients of labour and farm size were significant determinants of both vegetables output, while fuel was significant for only lettuce.Therefore it is recommended that agro inputs should be made available at affordable prices and timely too to urban farmers. Also small earth dams should be built around urban areas. Urban vegetables farmers should be encouraged to adopt technologies of net or green houses and hydroponics to boost their production. This is expected to mop up the excess labor concentrated in these urban areas, thereby increasing the production of vegetables.