Exploring the effect of education on environmental performance of selected female farmers in South West Nigeria

Abstract

Sustainable agriculture has great potential to preserve the environment, ensure gender balanced growth and encourage positive changes to help achieve some sustainable development goals by the year 2030. However, unsustainable agricultural practices like bush burning have led to pollution, deforestation and land degradation over the years. However, education is very important for better environmental performance. This paper aims to examine the effect of educational empowerment on environmental performance among female farmers in South West Nigeria. Questionnaire was distributed to 508 female farmers. The Path coefficient of 0.688 showed that educational empowerment has a considerable influence on environmental performance. While R 2 value of 0.474 means that 47.4% variance in environmental performance can be explained by educational empowerment. The study concludes female farmers will be environmentally friendly if they have access to regular training on sustainable agricultural practices. Hence, it is recommended that female farmers should organize suitable training and find ways of reaching extension workers to sensitize them on sustainable farm practices and climate adaptation methods that promote environmental performance.