The Nature of Land Resource Ownership and Perceptions on its Management among Farming Families of South East Nigeria

Land has a cultural value in Nigeria in that its ownership cements
the relationship of the owner with the community. But more
importantly, land resource is critical to the livelihood of rural
farmers because they depend on it for income and food supply.
It is therefore important that it is sustainably managed and
efficiently used. This study investigated the ownership pattern
of land among the farming families in the study area and the
attitude towards its management. It adopted the farming and
rural systems approach which considers the family-farmhousehold
as a system. A multistage random sampling technique
was used to select 120 farming families. A hierarchical clustering
process was used to group the sample into the Land Resource
Rich (LRR) and Land Resource Poor (LRP). Data collected
were further analysed and interpreted in a comparative manner
using descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney-u test. The Likert
scale was used to assess their perceptions on land management.
The results show that the LRP had an average land area that
was one-third of the land-resource rich. The LRR were more
active in land market in terms of sales, rent and purchase