Author(s)

N. T. Meludu

Abstract

Disasters are extremely harmful to people and cause considerable loss to national economies. Food production in rural areas is especially vulnerable to disaster. Disaster management is therefore extremely important everywhere in the world, especially in developing countries. Agriculture concerns food production, and the consumption of food is a primary life prerequisite for all human beings wherever they are living on the globe. Agriculture is also one of the economic sectors that turns out to be the most affected by disasters. Integrating agriculture, livelihoods and environmental issues into disaster response efforts and risk reduction strategies is particularly important for poor communities, often resident on marginal lands, which are at greatest risk of natural disasters. That is the reason why this study is focused on the awareness and utilization of strategies for disaster management in agriculture. The result revealed that the higher percentage (55%) of the respondents ranked flooding as the most severe risk, followed by erosion (20%), pollution (10%), and pest and disease outbreak (5%) respectively. The majority of the respondents showed high training needs in the entire preventive and control methods of disaster risks. This corresponds with the respondents’ lack of awareness of the disaster management strategies and the kind of risk these people face. This is an indication that the respondents have not received any training on disaster management and could be adopting poor strategies or no strategy at all. However, there is significant relationship between marital status (χ2 =5.134; p = 0.014) and level of education ((χ2 =17.678; p = 0.001) and awareness. It was discovered that some of the farmers

Keywords

livelihoods, environment, disaster, mortality, awareness, risk reduction, strategies, training, utilization, Nigeria