International Journal of Agriculture and Forestry 2014, 4(3): 217-223 DOI: 10.5923/j.ijaf.20140403.12 Property Rights and Adoption of Land Management Practices in Ekiti State, Nigeria Akinola A. A. 1,* , J. O. Ikudayisi 1 , B. Ayedun 2 1 Department of Agricultural Economics, Faculty of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria 2 International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan Abstract This paper investigated property rights and adoption of land management land management practices among maize farmers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. A multi stage sampling technique was used to select one hundred and twenty farmers. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentages while Gross margin analysis was employed to determine the profitability of maize enterprise in the study area under three land management practices. Multinomial Logit Model was used to determine the factors influencing adoption of each of the land management practices. The results showed that 93% of respondents were married, with a literacy level of 57%. The average farm size cultivated in the study area was 3.24 ha with about 53% of farmers being an active member of an association and a mean record of N 22,228.60 as off-farm income. The highest yield and net income was recorded among farmers who adopted organic fertilizer. Poverty indicators such as off-farm income, on-farm income and access to credit facilities decreased the probability of adopting the land management technologies. Total land asset and participation in social institutions were positively correlated with the adoption of land management technologies. Land tenure security is positively correlated with the adoption of fallowing, organic fertilizer and crop rotation. On the other hand, access to extension services and farm size positively influenced the adoption of organic fertilizer and crop rotation technologies. Appropriate policies should be designed to provide adequate and effective basic educational opportunities to the rural farming households. Efforts should also be made to institutionalize adult education among the farming households with a view to improving their ability to read and write. Programs that would enhance tenure security such as land registration should be put in place in order to encourage adoption of land management practices. Keywords Land, Land management practices, Crop Rotation, Fallowing, Organic 1. Introduction Land is an indispensable resource of agricultural production. Economically, land is defined as the sum total of the natural and man-made resources over which possession of the earth’s surface gives control [1]. According to [2], land, to the farmer, is home and work place and shares it with the entire biotic complex. Land is also regarded as the single most important factor of production, serving as the medium on which crops grow. Unlike most inputs, it is fixed in nature and cannot be increased or decreased but can only be improved upon. It is a major determinant of the level of income of resource-poor farmer in Nigeria who predominantly grows maize. Maize is one of the two major crops that occupy about 40% of the land area under agricultural production, and accounts for about 43% of the maize grown in West Africa [3, 4]. A large body of past research shows that the major * Corresponding author: aakinola2000@yahoo.com (Akinola A. A.) Published online at http://journal.sapub.org/ijaf Copyright © 2014 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved determinants of land management include households’ endowments of different types of capital, land tenure and the biophysical and socioeconomic environment in which rural households live [5-7]. Land use and management practices affect human health directly and indirectly. It affects fauna and flora, contributes to local, regional, and global climate changes and is the primary source of soil, water and land degradation [8, 9]. In many African nations, land use has been characterized by a significant amount of land degradation [10]. Many poor African farming households respond to declining land productivity by abandoning existing degraded and cropland, and moving to new land for crop cultivation where such exist. However, the increasing rate of population growth (about 3% per annum) and the use of suitable agricultural land for other economic activity (roads, hospital, e.t.c.) has reduced the amount of land available per person. This invariability affects the quality of available land and level of profitability. Reduced land access and limited land rights tend to work as disincentives for farmers as they are often discouraged from effective participation in agricultural production and adoption of land enriching technologies. Pertinent research