Towards Attainment of Sustainable Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction among Rural Farmers: Whither Farm Waste Utilization?

Agricultural activities are generally known to generate waste materials during crop growth and harvest. Similarly, livestock farming experiences a large volume of by-products in terms of urines and faeces. Wastes are also generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products and the consumption of final products. According to Afolayan et al. (2012), various scientists estimated waste generation in Nigeria at 0.58 kg/person/day, which is further breakdown as follows: municipal solid waste – 4,075 million tons, fuel wood-38.1million tons, agro waste-11.24 million tons with sawdust at 1.8 million tons. The above estimations is with little or no consideration for the rural dwellers that constitute more than 53% of over 170 million population of the country, whom farming is their primary occupation.

Many rural farm families make a living from a variety of livelihood choices ranging from cultivation of arable and tree crops and rearing of livestock to trading and agro-processing amongst others. Several farm residues generated in the process, in conventional practices, are generally treated in uncontrolled manner, by either burning in open-air fires or thrown away to decay. This burning or decomposition, apart from amounting to a colossal waste of resources, contributes to environmental degradation and pollution which is hazardous to both human and ecology. So, many rural dwellers conventionally made their livelihood choices without considering a full utilization of these items, despite the invaluable potentials and availability of these items. Rather, they often focus more on major produce/product of their cultivation/processing, with the farm residue often regarded as waste items and discarded with their vast potentials left untapped or underutilized (Yusuf, 2014). The notions of discarding waste, simply through burning or decomposition, are now changing. There is current spate of transformation which presents new choices and opportunities, and provides lessons and pointers for industrial, social and environmental policy in the new post-industrial landscape. Three basic drivers of this change which are now turning waste and waste management into a dynamic, fast-changing, international economic sector include: growing concern about the hazards of waste disposal; broader environmental concerns, especially global warming and resource depletion; and economic opportunities created by new waste regulations and technological innovation (Murray, 1999).So the concept of waste as a material “which has no use” is changing to that of “a resource” by converting into useful materials with necessary modifications (Kumar and Grover, 2007).

So, materials often regarded as wastes by rural inhabitants could constitute part of natural asset base within the rural environment that can be convertible to important local resources. They should be regarded as by-products which exploitation could enhance sustainable livelihood diversification and facilitate economic empowerment of the rural populace. For instance, biomass briquettes, mostly made of green waste and other organic materials, such as rice husk, groundnut shells, could be used for electricity generation, heat and cooking fuel in the rural areas. Sadly, however, big trees, protecting the ecosystem, are massively cut down in order to make coal to meet energy needs, thereby worsening environmental degradation. The dependence on traditional charcoal and firewood, Sabiiti (2011) noted, contributes to the prevailing deforestation and soil degradation, the effects of which have manifested in irregular rainfall, floods and violent storms. There is inadequate knowledge about waste generation and composition in rural areas globally because these types of studies have been conducted mainly in big cities, noted Taboada-González et al. (2010). Also, many scholarly writings on waste materials emphasize mainly the environmental and hardware-technological aspects of wastes, with less attention to the affective domain (Jekayinfa and Omisakin, 2005; Oyeleke and Jibrin, 2009; Oladeji, 2011). It is also important to note that what a society regards as „waste‟ is intensely socially construed. People indifferent cultures or even indifferent tribes within the same culture may value same things differently. In essence, what may be covert-waste to some may be deemed overt-resource to others. These thus underscore the necessity for sociological inquiry about farm waste generation and utilization. On this premise, the authors draw on rational choice theory and theory of planned behavior to provide theoretical underpinning for the study.