Developing alternative farm plans for cropping system decision making

Declining trend of domestic food production has led to the establishment of a national agricultural programme under the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in Nigeria. The programme is envisaged to result in increased food production by engaging educated persons in food crop farming. The programme participants, due to their level of education, are also expected to be more efficient in their use of farm resources. In this study, we have generated optimal farm plans for NDE farmers in three different locations in Ondo state, Nigeria, assessed the resource-use efficiency of the sampled farmers, and provided alternative farm plans that are nearly-optimal, and more likely to be acceptable to the farmers when considerations for risk and uncertainty are introduced using an approach known as Modelling to Generate Alternatives (MGA). Results of our analyses suggested sole cropping as the optimal cropping system for the three locations and non-attainment of optimal gross margins ranged from 24 to 37% among the locations. Although the optimal plans suggested sole cropping, the alternative farm plans provided for mixed cropping when the resulting gross margins were allowed to decrease by as little as 1% from the optimal values. These alternative plans represent various levels of enterprise diversification depending on a particular farmer's risk attitude. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.