American-Eurasian J. Agric. & Environ. Sci., 13 (8): 1063-1071, 2013 ISSN 1818-6769 © IDOSI Publications, 2013 DOI: 10.5829/idosi.aejaes.2013.13.08.1933 Corresponding Author: S.O. Adigbo, Institute of Food Security, Environmental Resource and Agricultural Research, University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria. 1063 Exploiting the Potentials of Inland Valleys of Nigeria for Poverty Alleviation S.O. Adigbo, J.N. Odedina, T.O. Fabunmi and V.B. Adigbo 1 2 2 3 Institute of Food Security, Environmental Resource and Agricultural Research, 1 Plant Physiology and Crop Production Department, 2 Department of Plant Breeding and Seed Technology, 3 Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria Abstract: Poverty is steering at the face of most developing countries particularly the Sub-Sahara Africa in spite of the abundance inland valleys which have the potential of growing three crops in sequence within a year without irrigation. Inland valleys show considerable potential for intensification and sustainable land use. The potential impact of this valley is related to the presence of water and total areas covered for the production of many food crops. However, they are only marginally utilized. The paper highlighted the abundance of this high potential natural resource, existing cropping systems in the inland valleys of Nigeria. It further elucidated (1) the potential of inland valley as a highly productive agricultural land source for resource poor farmer (2) the research interventions to increase productivity and 3) other relevant issues pertaining to resilience of the systems, were reported. The yields of crops in inland valleys are generally much higher than on the uplands. The naturally abound inland valley in Nigeria is a high resource potential for food crop production. It is robust and resilient resource that could support triple cropping systems on sustainable basis without the fear of deterioration. Each component of the triple crops in the inland valley out yielded the single crop in the upland counterpart. Thus, for Nigeria and indeed Africa to be food sufficient, judicious management of wetlands may likely be the pathway to satisfactorily meeting the food supply of teaming population of a continent plagued by poor soils, drought and environmental destruction. Key words: Inland valley Triple cropping systems INTRODUCTION uplands [2-4]. They are characterized by fine- textured Inland valleys which could also called ‘bas-fonds’, water and air [7] and potentially highly productive sites ‘marigots’, ‘dambo’, ‘dwala’, ‘fadama’, ‘akuro’ or‘ vlei’, for agriculture [8, 9]. They are valuable for agriculture and are one of the various categories of wetlands and are, are important to international biodiversity as breeding perhaps, best defined in relation to the entire West grounds for migratory birds [10]. Inland valley is known African landscape. Tarnocai [1] defined wetland as land to have considerable potential for intensification and having the water table at, near, or above the land surface sustainable land use [11, 12]. or which is saturated for a long enough period to promote Tropical Asia, with about 1/13 of the world's land wetland or aquatic processes as indicated by hydric soils, area, has more than 1/3 of the potentially arable lowlands hydrophytic vegetation and various kinds of biological [13]. This perhaps explains why Asia is leading in rice activities which are adapted to the wet environment. production. Wetlands in Sub-Saharan Africa are estimated Such flooded areas are generally considered to be more to cover 228 million ha [14, 15]. There is a preponderance robust and resilient to land use pressure than the fragile of inland valleys in West Africa, where valley bottoms soils [5], are islands of biodiversity [6], providers of clean