Rural Households’ Preference and Consumption Patterns of African Breadfruit in Osun State, Nigeria: Implication for Food Security

Afolabi AA¹*, Abulude IA², Ojo OK¹ and Odekuoye JP³

¹Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Faculty of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria ²International PhD Program for Agricultural Economics, Bioeconomy, and Sustainable Food Systems (IPPAE). Institute of Agricultural Policy and Market Research. Justus-Liebig University, Germany ³Department of Crop Production and Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria Keywords: Acceptance; African Breadfruit; Rural Households; Food Security

Abbreviations

NTFPs: Non-Timber Forest Products; NTBG: National Tropical Botanical Garden; LGAs: Local Government Areas; OSSADEP: Osun State Agricultural Development Programme.

Introduction

Among the abundant resources embedded in Nigeria are the forest products which are also of economic importance to the rural dwellers. A forest product is any material derived from forestry for direct consumption or commercial use such as lumber, paper production, and the finished structural materials used for the construction of buildings [1]. Forest products are divided into wood products and non-wood products. All other non-wood products derived from forest resources comprising a broad variety of other forest products are collectively described as Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) [1]. Among the examples of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) are bamboo, rattan, cork, gum, aromatic oils and breadfruit.

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are the primary resources from forests and contribute to the economic development in developing countries [2, 3]. NTFPs are also acknowledged as being positively associated with forest conservation [4]. The economic benefits from non-timber forest products are likely to change local community attitudes toward maintaining forest biodiversity [5]. The absence of NTFPs would critically have a negative impact on the livelihood and well-being of rural residents [6]. The importance of forest-based resources especially African breadfruit popularly known as “gbere/afon” to the rural populace in Yoruba land, Southwestern, Nigeria is enormous. African breadfruit formed an inherent part of the people’s daily life for millennia [7].

Breadfruit is grown due to its nutritional quality. The tree is also used as a vegetable which is widely distributed in tropical Africa [8]. Breadfruits grow easily in a wide range of ecological conditions with minimal input of labour or materials and require little attention or care [9]. However, few African breadfruit growing regions have adequate cultivar diversity for year- round production [10]. As noted by National Tropical Botanical Garden, 2009, most breadfruit cultivars have a main fruiting season between July and November followed by a second smaller season earlier in the year.

Breadfruit can be processed and consumed in many forms, including baked, boiled, mashed, steamed or roasted and consumed with soups or other flavourings. It can be ground into powder and has been found to have bread- making properties and could be used for pastries, weaning foods, breakfasts cereals [11], alcohol, and wood production [8, 12], beverages [12, 13, 14] and the tree has medicinal and environmental value [15]. Economically, the collection and sales of African breadfruit provide seasonal and off-season income for rural farmers. Many rural dwellers in South- Western and Eastern Nigeria are engaged in the collection and sales of the species [16]. Under favourable climatic conditions and in good soil, 120-200kg of dried grains can be harvested from one tree of the species in a year as noted by the World Agroforestry Centre.

Despite studies have shown the potential of African breadfruit extracts in medicine, enhancing the income of people, maintaining its nutritional value and proximate analysis [11, 15, 17] little or non-investigation have been conducted to assess the acceptance, frequency and mode of consuming African breadfruit. The foregoing arouses the quest to assess the acceptance, frequency and mode of consuming African breadfruit in Osun State, Nigeria. The specific objectives of the study are to determine the socio- economic characteristics of the rural households, determine the rural households’ frequency and mode of consuming African breadfruit and to determine the attitude of the rural households to the production and consumption of African breadfruit.

The following hypotheses were tested: Hypothesis (Ho1): there is no significant relationship between the socio-economic characteristics of youth and their acceptance of African breadfruit. Hypothesis (Ho2): there is no significant relationship between rural households’ attitudes towards the production and consumption of African breadfruit and acceptance of African breadfruit.

Methodology

The study was conducted in Osun State in three Osun State Agricultural Development Programme (OSSADEP) zones namely Ife/Ijesa, Iwo and Osogbo. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select respondents. In the first stage, 25 percent of the total Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the three zones were purposively selected based on the predominance of breadfruit. Three out of ten LGAs in Ife-Ijesha zone (Atakumosa East, Ife East and Ife South), two out of seven LGAs in Iwo zone (Irewole and Isokan), and three out of thirteen LGAs in Osogbo zone ( Ila, Olorunda and Odo Otin) making a total of eight LGAs. In the second stage, the purposive sampling technique was used to select three communities from each of the selected LGAs making a total of twenty-four communities in all. In the third stage, the purposive sampling technique was used to select four rural households with youth within the age bracket of 18-40 years; father and mother from each of the twenty-four communities making a total of 288 rural household members that formed the respondents for the study.

Results and Discussion

The results in Table 1 show that the mean age of the respondents was 47.8 years with a standard deviation of 1.32. This result corroborates the findings of Olarenwaju [18] which states that Osun State rural dwellers were middle- aged as the majority fell between the ages of 30 and 60 years. About 62.2 percent of the respondents were male while 37.8% of the respondents were female. This is in agreement with the findings of Gidaroku [19] which indicated that in most rural farming communities, men are more inclined to farming while women only occupy the positions of farmers’ wives. The mean family size is 6.35 with a standard deviation of 2.95. This finding is in agreement with Ekong [20] who estimated that the average household size in the rural area of Nigeria is 6. The findings reveal that rural households were no longer as large as they used to be traditionally when large household sizes were needed for farm labour. This observation might be because the majority of parents in rural areas now send their children to schools instead of using them as cheap sources of labour as reported by Alabi [21]. The mean years of formal schooling was 10.7±4.67. This implies that the majority of the respondents were literate and could source the importance of African Breadfruit from friends, neighbours, the internet, and extension agents among others which in turn influenced their perceived knowledge of the importance of African Breadfruit and attitude to its production and consumption. These findings conform with Ojo [22], that the majority of the farmers in South Western Nigeria are literate. The mean average monthly income was ₦41,759 with a standard deviation of 19,461.

Mode and Frequency of Consuming African Breadfruit

Modes of consuming breadfruit include boiling, pounding, pureeing, frying, mixing with protein, roasting, steaming, mashing, and pudding among others. Results in Table 2 show that boiling (mean =3.11) ranked highest among the listed mode of consumption, followed by pounding (mean =2.42), mixing with protein (mean =1.44), fried chips (mean =1.34) and, roasting (mean= 1.22). This implies that boiling and pounding are the most common modes of consuming breadfruit in the study area. This may be because breadfruit requires much oil for frying. However, the grand mean of the mode and frequency of consuming breadfruit is 1.19. This shows that at least each respondent will consume breadfruit yearly. This finding agreed with Morton [23], who stated that breadfruit can also be fried, baked, steamed and boiled. However, the finding is in contrary to Morton [23], who stated that in West Africa, African breadfruit is sometimes made into puree and pudding.

Attitude Towards the Production and Consumption of African Breadfruit

The results in Table 3 show that planting of African breadfruit is important for its medicinal purpose (mean =2.61) ranked the highest of the attitude towards the production and consumption of African breadfruit, followed by consumption of African breadfruit does not have any medicinal purpose (mean =2.38), planting of African breadfruit can generate income (mean =2.31), consumption of African breadfruit is cheap (mean =2.30), planting of African breadfruit take longer years to mature (mean =2.25), planting of African breadfruit is important for its environment purpose (mean =2.21), my community does not like eating African breadfruit (mean =2.12), planting of African breadfruit cannot generate income (mean =2.08), planting of African breadfruit is important because my community love eating it (mean =2.04), planting of African breadfruit is not important because nobody will buy it (mean =1.98), friends/relations motivate one another to cultivate African breadfruit (mean =1.91), planting of African breadfruit is used as catch crop (mean =1.85), planting of African breadfruit is not important for its low shelf life (mean =1.75), friends/relations do not motivate one another to cultivate African breadfruit (mean =1.63), consumption of African breadfruit require some certain soup (mean =1.56), planting of African breadfruit does not suppress the growth of other crops (mean =1.51), cultivation of African breadfruit is not important because it take too much space (mean =1.44), consumption of African breadfruit does not require certain soup (mean =1.34), there is a cultural taboo restricting its cultivation (mean =1.16), consumption of African breadfruit is associated with slavery (mean =1.10), consumption of African breadfruit is not associated with slavery (mean =0.95) while there is no cultural taboo restricting its cultivation (mean =0.90) ranked the lowest attitude to the production and consumption of African breadfruit. However, the grand mean was 1.79. Based on this, it can be deduced that 54.5 percent of the respondents agreed with the attitude towards the production and consumption of breadfruit.

Hypothesis One: Association Between Selected Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Rural Households and their Acceptance of African Breadfruit

Results of chi-square analysis in Table 4 reveal that there was a positive and significant association between acceptance of breadfruit and religion (χ2= 21.966; P=0.000), level of education (χ2= 46.136; P=0.000), cosmopoliteness (χ2= 16.877; P=0.000), farthest distance travelled (χ2= 22.943; P=0.003) and association membership (χ2= 15.839; P=0.000) in the study area. This implies that since the majority (62.2%) of the respondents were Christians, religion will influence their acceptance of African breadfruit because Christianity does not place restrictions on the production and consumption of African breadfruit. Also, the more the level of education, the more their acceptance. Education will help the respondents to source for more information on African breadfruit. The result also indicates that the higher their external orientation, the higher their acceptance. External exposure enhances the use of new ideas obtained through external affluence. Also, the more the respondents belong to an association, the more their acceptance of African breadfruit. At p ≤ 0.05, there was a significant association between ethnic group (χ2= 10.825; P=0.029), residency in other communities (χ2= 7.194; P=0.027) and acceptance of African breadfruit. This implies that the fact that the majority (85.4%) of the respondents were Yorubas and were mostly farmers suggests that they are likely to be involved in the production and/or consumption of African breadfruit while those who reside in other communities might get information from their community, thereby enhancing their perceived knowledge.

Correlation Analysis Between Selected Socio-Economic Characteristics of the Rural Households and their Acceptance Of African Breadfruit

Results in Table 5 show that years of formal schooling (r= -0.165) had a significant and negative relationship with acceptance of African breadfruit at p ≤ 0.05. This implies that the higher the years spent in formal schooling, the lower the acceptance of breadfruit. This may be due to the fact that indigenes of the rural communities who had an interest in education would have moved out of rural areas to pursue their academic careers. Furthermore, the correlation (r) coefficient of -0.165 for years spent in formal schooling has contributed by 16% to the acceptance of African breadfruit in the study area.

Hypothesis Two: There is No Significant Relationship Between Rural Households’ Attitude and Their Acceptance of African Breadfruit

Results in Table 6 reveal that the attitude of rural households to the production and consumption of African breadfruit (r =0.219, p ≤0.01) had a positive significant relationship with acceptance of African breadfruit. This implies that the more positively disposed to the production and consumption of African breadfruit the rural households were, the higher their acceptance. This was so because as the rural households were producing and consuming African breadfruit, they were likely to be searching for more information about the importance which will increase their perceived knowledge. Furthermore, the correlation (r) coefficient of 0.219 for attitude of rural households to the production and consumption of African breadfruit have contributed by 21% to the acceptance of African breadfruit in the study area.

Conclusion

The study concludes that the majority (77.4%) of the respondents had less than 20 years of knowledge about breadfruit. The respondents had access to information and were also aware of the importance of African breadfruit. The sources of awareness were friends, neighbours, radio, extension agents, television, newspaper, social networks, Farmers Association and seminars. The attitude towards the production and consumption of African breadfruit was indifferent. It was recommended that policy-makers, government and non- governmental agencies should make know the importance of African breadfruit to rural dwellers through training, seminars and so on. Extension workers should be equipped with information that will assist them in training rural dwellers on the value chain activities of African breadfruit to enhance their livelihood. Extension agents should also train farmers on how to cultivate African breadfruit to enhance its production nationwide.