A Binary Logit Estimation of Factors Influencing Awareness about Grasscutter Farming among Rural and Sub-urban Households in Kwara State, Nigeria

Hunting of grass cutter for food in Nigeria is unsustainable due to serious challenges posed to the ecosystems, adequate bush meat supply and human health. To enhance sustainable exploitation, grass cutter farming is desirable but large percentage of the population still lack awareness about grass cutter rearing. This study was aimed at investigating factors influencing awareness about grass cutter farming in Kwara state. A two–stage sampling technique was used to select 540 participants from rural and sub-urban households for the study. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression model were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the respondents had an average age of 46 years with an average family size of 7 persons. Majority (77%) of the respondents were males. The Nagelkerke R2, explained 80.9% of the total variation in awareness of households. The coefficient of age, gender, household size, education, and access to credit with the t-values of -2.333, 1.959, 2.000, 2.235 and 13.832 respectively were all found to be critical in explaining awareness among the sampled households. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that any intervention strategy on grass cutter farming by government and international development agencies should have a capacity-building component center on educating households about the management practices and livelihood merits of farm grass cutters. Increase awareness through media should be promoted and policies like loan schemes that would substantially improve households’ access to use and acquisition of credits should be encouraged.