Emanating Ecological Challenges Causing Retrogressive Farm Outputs in Birnin-Kudu, Jigawa State

Ecological challenges are described as difficulties or problems arise from the interactions between biotic-biotic, biotic-abiotic or abiotic-abiotic in the environment. It could also be described as the negative impacts of anthropogenic activities on the earth and its compositional natural systems. They can be biotic (i.e relating to living entities, such as plants and animals) or abiotic (i.e relating to non-living entities, such as climatic conditions) in nature. In this study, a total of six hundred (600) structured questionnaires were administered across various locations in Birnin-Kudu, Jigawa State. The information obtained on the ecological challenges affecting farm outputs revealed that 52.94% of the respondents strongly agreed that plant-pest interaction affects farm output, 41.18% agreed, while only 5.88% disagreed. 63.55% of the respondents strongly agreed that changes in climatic condition affect farm outputs, while 36.47% agreed. 47.06% of the respondents strongly disagreed that the application of pesticides, herbicides and rodenticides cause effect to farm outputs, where 18% of the respondents agreed and strongly agreed that it affect farm outputs while 15.29% disagreed. 69.41% strongly agreed that the flooding affect farm output, where 30.59% agreed. The study concluded that farmers were practicing varieties of farming food crops activities including Millet, Sorghum, Maize, Sesame, and Rice production. However, interacting ecological challenges including plant-pest interactions, pesticides application, lack of fertilizer, bush burning and flood disaster have negatively affected their livelihood activities, thereby contributing to retrogressive farm output resulting to food insecurity, loss of some good crop breeds, loss of lives, disease outbreak, affect climatic conditions and poverty among farmers in the study area. Consequently, the farmers have expressed the need for the intervention of; government, farmers, non-governmental organizations, gov’t/farmers/community, agriculturalist, community leaders, agronomist, foresters, crop production expert and ecologist for contribution towards the improvement of farming activities in the study area.