Land Tenure Systems and Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria: a Case of Rice Production

This study examined land tenure systems and rice productivity in Nigeria. Primary data were used for the study. Data were collected with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire. A four-stage sampling technique was used to select a total sample size of three hundred and forty-nine (349) rice farmers based on the number of questionnaires correctly filled and returned from the selected sampled size. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, total factor productivity, and Stochastic production frontier model. The study revealed that large portion of the land (over 94%) used for rice production were acquired through inheritance mode of land acquisition and communal type of land tenure system widely practiced. The result of total factor productivity indicated that 62.18% of the rice farmers were at sub-optimal productivity level. The results of the stochastic production frontier function revealed that seed (P< 0.10), and fertilizer application (P<0.01) were the significant factors influencing technical efficiency of rice production in the study area. Based on the findings, the study recommend that current land use act and policy should be amended to prevent concurrent grabbing of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes in order to enhance availability and accessibility of land for agriculture. their ability to possess full ownership and control in the used of the farm land. The stochastic production frontier function for rice farmers shows that fertilizer (P<0.01), seed input (P<0.10), land acquisition (P<0.01), and labour utilized (P<0.01) were statistically significant.


Introduction
Land is one of the vital assets throughout the world either in urban centers or rural environments' where lives and survival is based and build on the cultivation of land [1]. According to [2] smallholder farmers play key roles in achieving food security but unfortunately, they face limited access to land resources due to different socio-economic and land tenure factors. Land tenure is essentially, the methods by which individuals or groups acquire, hold, transfer or transmit property rights in land [3]. The term tenure means the sum of rights an individual, household or community may have with respect to land or water or other resources for that matter. It is a mix or number of entitlements (rights and duties) concerning the use of land resources. It covers the rules under which those rights and duties are exercised and the time horizon or guarantee of continued claim to such entitlements. In simple terms, land tenure systems determine who can use what resources for how long and under what conditions. Land remains a limited resource and its distribution as well as tenure structures are key issues in nation's agricultural developmental strategy. The development of the rice sub-sectors in Nigeria revolves, largely around the ownership and use of land resources, and type of labour [4]. Land is the main factor for agricultural production and rural livelihoods, it is one of the principal challenges of implementing agricultural programs for improved productivity and resource utilization. Consequently, access to, and security of land rights are major concerns for policies and strategies aimed at increasing rice production. Land is therefore, a very strategic socio-economic asset, particularly in poor societies where agricultural output are measured by control of, and access to land.
Land tenure systems affect agricultural productivity by influencing the efficient use of inputs and adoption of modern technology. [5] opined that land tenure system has generally been broadly described as rigid, creating obstacles in the way of agricultural development. Land as a factor of production and as a natural resource is critical in agricultural production. Its importance is expressed in terms of availability, accessibility, quantity and quality. In Nigerian agriculture, the accessibility and quality factors stand out as major determinants of productivity. The accessibility of most agricultural lands especially in the North-Central part of the country depends largely on land tenure system and the extent of competition by non-agricultural land uses [6]. Farm size and productivity is one of the oldest issues in the academic arena for analyzing the agrarian structure.
Rice (Oryza sativa) is an important traditional basic commodity contributing a significant proportion of the food requirements of Nigerians and it is cultivated in almost all the agroecological zone in Nigeria [7]. In recent years, rice production had been on the increase but not sufficient to meet the demand of growing population According to [8] rainfed lowland and upland rice production have the potential to meet national demand. However, their average rice yield of 1.8tons/ha fall short of the expected national average potential yield of 5.0tons/ha and 3.0tons/ha respectively [9]. The current average increase in yield of about 2.5-3.2 tons/ha for lowland rice is a tremendous growth but still below the optimal level of production. Hence, there is a gap in the optimum capacity of rice farmers in realizing the expected output. The research is therefore set to ascertain the validity of this claim.
An efficient system of land tenure and land right contributes to the general economic development by assisting agriculture in contributing to industrial development through the production of food, capital, raw materials, labour, foreign exchange and expanded market. Consequently, the system of land tenure in any place to a large extent determines the pattern of agriculture that prevails in that society. It has potential to determine the allocation of resources, systems of conserving land and the general productivity of the farm. [5] reported that land right system determines the type of farming systems, decisions regarding investment of factors of production such as capital, labour and management as well as the productivity of such farming systems. Even though land tenure is believed to strongly impact upon agricultural production in rural areas of Nigeria, relatively little is known about the types and mode of land acquisition, how and the extent of the impact and in what specific areas of agricultural activities the impact is evident particularly in Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. The gap that existed on the dual mix of land tenure system and the effect on rice productivity in the Federal Capital Territory necessitated the need for research of this nature to fill the identified vacuum. Furthermore, much of the little that is known about the effect of land tenure on agricultural production in Northern Nigeria is merely speculative and not sufficiently substantiated or clarified by empirical evidence. Hence, the need for a study such as this in Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria.
From time immemorial till the present period, there has been a great concern that the process of land tenure system and land ownership practices for agricultural purpose and other uses in Sub-Sahara Africa subdued productivity, resource-use and-investments in agriculture [10]. The concern that land tenure disrupts free ownership and control of land resources are rarely backed with empirical evidence. Quantitative evidence to support the argument that there exits inverse relationship between land tenure practices and productivity are scanty and weak [11][12]. To some extent the weak evidence reflects the fact that either it is because it is difficult to measure the effect of land tenure on productivity or there is not enough empirical research that have been carried out in this area of human endaevour. Hence the need for research to be conducted on this subject area to fill the identified gap in literature. Therefore, the broad objective of the study was to examine the land tenure system and productivity of rice farmers in Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to: - identify the types of land tenure system and mode of land acquisitions by rice farmers, (ii) determine the productivity index of rice farmers, and (iii) examine the factors influencing technical efficiency of rice production

Land Tenure and Agricultural Productivity
Nigeria has about 84 million hectares of arable land that spreads across all the ecological zones and only about 5 million hectares is suitable for rice cultivation [13]. [14] suggested that a much smaller area is available for cultivation leaving little room for agricultural expansion as a result of which great difficulties are going to be faced in producing enough food to sustain future populations, and the impact of tenure on land use and productivity is critical. The customary principle of communal land tenure is seen as setting limits on strategies that could be used to promote agricultural production or as warping the effects of the various strategies in use [15]. It is argued that this principle encourages fragmentation of holdings and land immobility which prevents progressive farmers from consolidating fragmented parcels or expanding their holding.
The argument advanced by the critics of customary tenure emphasized the utility of private over communal (public) land-ownership, and the starting assumption appears to be that only private tenure can quickly adjust to the rigid social and economic change brought about by modernizing agriculture.
[16] stressed that the dominant source of output growth in Chinese agriculture during 1978-1984 was the change from collective -team large farms to individual household-based farming (despite the often-small size of household plots). Private plots usually are highly productive and account for significant national agricultural output; Individualized tenure facilitates the establishment of commercial agriculture; Communal tenure system under customary arrangement breeds uncertainty and insecurity of tenure [15].
[17] ownership insecurity causes low farm productivity due to a lack of investment incentives and limited access to credit; Tenant farmers have generally been found to be neglected in the allocation of credits and are subjected to insecurity as an additional source of risk to farmers.
Therefore, its impact on productivity depends on the ability of farmers to bear additional risk.
Corroborating this view, [15] stated that the right an individual exercise over his portion of communal land usually terminates at the end of the cropping season.

Figure 1: Map of the Federal Capital Territory Showing the Study Area
Source: [19] 3.2

Sampling Techniques and Sample Size
Federal Capital Territory was purposively selected because of the presence of rice farmers in the villages. Multi-stage sampling method was used for selecting the respondents. In the first stage, four (4) Area Councils were randomly selected using raffle-draw ballot-box method. In the second stage, four (4) wards were randomly selected each in Abaji, Bwari, Gwagwalada, and Kwali Area Councils respectively using raffle-draw ballot-box method. In the third stage, two (2) villages were randomly selected using raffle-draw ballot-box method from each of the 16 sampled wards making total of 32 villages. Fourth and the final stage, from equation (3.1) a proportionate random sampling was used to select a total sample size of three hundred and forty-nine (349) smallholder rice farmers from the total sample frame of 2723 rice farmers (FCT, ADP 2018).
However, two hundred and fifty (250) questionnaires were correctly filled and returned. The study used [23] for estimating sample size: Where, n = Sample Size (Units) N= Sample Frame/Population size (Units) e = Level of Precision (5%)

Method of Data Collection
Primary data were used for this study. Primary data were collected from rice farmers in the study area. Trained enumerators from Agricultural Development Project (ADP) were employed for data collection using well-structured questionnaire. The questionnaires were sectioned appropriately to cover all the specific objectives stated such as types of land tenure systems, mode of land acquisitions by rice farmers, and production inputs used by the farmers.

Method of Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics involve the use of mean, frequency and percentages. It was used to identify the land tenure system, and mode of land acquisitions as stated in specific objective one To achieve specific objective two (ii), that is, determine the productivity index of rice farmers; TFP model following [24] was used. The TFP approach adopted is given as: - Where, Total fixed cost is constant as it is fixed.
From Cost Theory: Where, AVC = Average Variable Cost in naira (N) Therefore, the transpose of AVC will be TFP As such, TFP is the inverse of the AVC. The partial productivity estimate is the marginal products (MP) given as

Note: At the time of undertaken this study, 1 dollar ($1) = 500 hundred naira (₦500)
The Stochastic Production Frontier Model following [25] Rahji (2005) is stated thus: The Stochastic production frontier model was used to achieve specific objective three (iii), which is, evaluate the factors influencing technical efficiency of rice production.

Mode of Land Acquisitions by Rice Farmers
The modes of land acquisition are presented in Table 1 and Figure 2. Inheritance is the highest mode of farm land acquisition as indicated by 94.56% response. Inheritance refers to the customary transfer of land to children on the death of the landholder. Inheritance ranks first and it is followed by purchase (3.44%). The title acquired under inheritance is permanent and heritable.
The holder of such title exercises full management rights over his/her holdings. The finding is in line with [26] that concluded that inheritance is the principal mode of land acquisition in Northern part of Nigeria. However, the finding differs with [27] who reported that purchase was the major means of acquiring land in South Eastern Nigeria. Farmers that own land tend to have an edge over farmers renting lands.

Types of Land Tenure System
The land tenure systems are presented in Table 2 and

Total Factor Productivity of Rice Production in the Study Area
The result of the total factor productivity in Table 3 shows that most (62.18%) of the smallholder rice farmers had TFP index less than one which means that the productivity is sub- optimal. Also, 19.2% of the respondents had TFP index greater than 1.10 which is in the superoptimal range, while 18.62% had TFP index within the optimal range of 1.00 and 1.09. This implies that most of the respondents performed less than the optimal level, meaning that there are low utilizations of production factors among the smallholder rice farmers. The result agreed with [29]. However, the finding contradicts that of [30] Ebe, Obike, Ug who posited that the average total factors were at optimal level among arable crop farmers. Figure 4 below represent a graph of total factor productivity. From the figure the total factor productivity was left skewed, which implies that most of the farmers were sub-optimal in productivity.

Factors Influencing Technical Efficiency of Rice Production in the Study Area
The result for the stochastic production frontier function for rice farmers showing the maximum likelihood estimates and inefficiency components are presented in Table 4. The study revealed that the Log-Likelihood value was -687.0619. The Log-Likelihood function implies that inefficiency exist in the data set. The estimated Chi square value of 57.90 was significant at 1% probability level. The Lambda value was 1.005, while the mean technical efficiency was 0.75. The Gamma value for the production function was 50.12%. This result is consistent with theory that postulated that gamma (γ) value should be greater than zero which means statistically different from zero [31]. The implication of the result is that 50.12% of the variations in the yield of the rice farmers are due to the farmer inefficiency rather than random variability. Therefore, since the factors are within the control of the farmers, reducing the effect of the gamma(γ) will greatly enhance the technical efficiency of the farmers and thereby improve potential yields of rice  production. Hence, the values represent the total output made on the frontier production function attributed to technical efficiency [25]. The average technical efficiency of 0.75 implies that rice farmers are able to obtain 75% of the output from the mixtures of inputs used.
The estimated coefficient of seed was positive and statistically significant at 10% level of probability. The estimated coefficient of seed is 0.3186l. The implication of the positive coefficient was that seeds input contributed significantly to the technical efficiency of rice production. This implies that a unit increase in seed by one percent, increases the output of rice by 31.86%. This is in line with [32][33] that poised that there is a positive relationship between seeds and farmers efficiency in the production process. Seed is very important in production as it determines to a large extent the kind of output obtained. Hence, farmers need to be mindful of the quality, seed rate and variety of seed used in order to obtain increased output. Output will be low in the absence of good quality and improved seeds even if other inputs are in abundance [32].
Similarly, fertilizer is negative and statistically significant at 1% level of probability. The negative sign implies that the factors had an indirect effect on rice production. The implication of the coefficient of fertilizer which was -0.2809 is that if the fertilizer increases by one percent, it could decrease output by 28.09%. Fertilizer is a major input for improving the performance of output per hectare of cultivated crops. Farmers in this instance had excessively apply fertilizer on their rice farms. The result is in consonance with the research findings of [34][35][36].
For the inefficiency effect components presented in Table 4, the result indicated that farming experience (P<0.10), sex (P<0.05) and labour utilization (P<0.10) were negative and statistically significant. The signs of the coefficients of these variables have an important policy implications as positive sign implies negative effect on technical efficiency and vice versa.
Therefore, the implication of sex being negative and statistically significant at 5% level of probability implies that as sex disparity increases, technical inefficiency declines thereby increasing the efficiency in production. That is, male farmers had the likelihood of lowering technical inefficiency. The result is in line with the findings of [37] that asserted that male farmers were more technically efficient than their female counterpart cultivating same crop. Also, farm experience is negative and significant at 10% level of probability which indicates that as farm experience increases, technical inefficiency decreases. Hence, experience in farming activities enhance better performance, improve knowledge and ability to make good farm decisions that will lead to efficiency and profitable enterprise. This finding is supported by [38][39][40] that concluded that farmers with more experience would be more efficient. Labour utilization on the other hand is negative and statistically significant at 10% probability level. Labour is significant probably because virtually all farming activities are carried out using human labour among small scale farming households in developing countries like Nigeria where mechanization is rarely deployed [31]. The coefficient of labour utilization was -0.35116. The result of the coefficient implies that a unit increase in labour utilization will likely lead to 35.11% decrease of technical inefficiencies in rice production in the study area. The results are in line with several studies that confirmed the importance of labour in farming activities. Such studies are [41][42][43][44].
The estimated coefficient of land acquisition is 0.2054 and it was statistically significant at 1% probability level. The result implies that a unit increase in land acquisition by one unit will decrease the technical inefficiency of the farmers output by 20.54%. The findings conform with the results of [45] in the analysis of rice production in Enugu State, Nigeria.

Conclusion
The study investigated land tenure system and its effects on rice productivity in Nigeria.
The study revealed that communal and inheritance are the established forms of land tenure and mode of land acquisition respectively in the study area. These identified means of land control constitute constraints and negatively influence the productivity of the rice farmers particularly has it reduces their ability to possess full ownership and control in the used of the farm land. The stochastic production frontier function for rice farmers shows that fertilizer (P<0.01), seed input (P<0.10), land acquisition (P<0.01), and labour utilized (P<0.01) were statistically significant.
Therefore, the study concluded that land tenure and acquisition play a significant role in the determination of agricultural productivity.

Recommendations
Based on the results of analysis from this study, the following recommendations are made: (i). Land use act and policy that is currently in use should be amended. This is necessary to enhance availability and accessibility of land to individuals, groups and institutions for rice production and agricultural purposes. The amendment is also important in order to mitigate the preponderance of inheritance mode of land acquisition and communal tenure system.
(ii). Farmers should train on appropriate utilization of production factors such as fertilizer, seeds, land and agrochemicals so as to increase their technical efficiency and output.

Declarations
Availability of data and materials: Data used for the research was gathered through structured questionnaire administered. The questionnaire is attached herewith as appendix I. Also, the data gathered were analyzed appropriately and the result is presented as appendix II.

APPENDIX I QUESTIONNAIRE LAND TENURE SYSTEM AND AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN NIGERIA: A CASE OF RICE PRODUCTION
Dear Respondent, This questionnaire and information gathered will be used for research purposes on the research subject titled above. Please, kindly respond or tick (√) where necessary. All information will be treated with utmost confidentiality and will strictly be used for the purpose of research only. Thanks for your cooperation.