Spectral Effects of Eco-Innovations' Adoption On Sustainable Livelihoods’ Resilience Among Small-Scale Wheat Farmers In Jigawa State of Nigeria

The adoption of eco-innovations for sustainable livelihoods among wheat farmers in Jigawa State, Nigeria, presents a pressing problem that necessitates attention and intervention. Despite the potential benefits associated with eco-friendly agricultural practices, the rate of adoption remains a significant challenge, hindering the attainment of sustainable livelihoods for wheat farmers in the region. Consequently, this research is timely as it investigates the spectral effects of eco-innovations on the sustainable livelihood resilience of small-scale wheat farmers in Jigawa State, Nigeria. Using cross-sectional data elicited through a well-structured questionnaire coupled with an interview schedule from a total of 284 farmers selected via a multi-stage sampling technique during the 2022–2023 cropping season, the research gap was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Inspite of the accumulative livelihood strategy and high adoption of eco-innovations among the majority of farmers, the extension gap challenge hampered the landslide adoption of eco-innovations and the intention to key into crop insurance among these farmers. Nevertheless, the majority of the farmers had their farms to be sustainable, which underscores the importance of adopting eco-innovations as a climate change resilience measure, thus enabling them to achieve the accumulated livelihood strategy in the study area. Succinctly, adoption of eco-innovations has a strong endogenous effect on livelihood status en-route farm sustainability but a weak endogenous effect on livelihood status en-route willingness-to-pay (WTP). Consequently, onus lies on policymakers to address the extension gap by enhancing advisory services for effective feed-forward and feed-backward flows of information sources, risk orientation, and slight modification of the neo-conventional eco-innovations in order to suit the farms’ ecological settings in the study area. This singular approach has the potential to be a single silver bullet that will enhance farmers' climate change resilience, farms’ sustainability, and guarantee a prosperous sustainable farm family livelihood status in the study area. Keywords: Eco-innovations; Adoption; Sustainability; Livelihood; Resilience; Wheat farmers; Nigeria