ASSESSMENT OF THE LEVEL OF PRODUCTIVITY, COMMERCIALIZATION AND RESILIENCE IN THE LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION IN BAUCHI STATE

This study assessed the level of productivity, commercialization and resilience in the livestock production in Bauchi State, the study adopted a survey research design, this design allows the researcher to narrowed the study to three communities (i) Sullubawa (ii) Gamawa and (iii) Ningi respectively where livestock production is the main activities of the people. The study population is 496, 501 from which a sample size of 341 sample size was drawn using Krejcie Morgan’s formula statistics of determining sampling size, questionnaire instrument was used for data collection, while key informant interview was conducted with Ten (10) critical stakeholders (2 Crop farmers, 3 Livestock farmer, 3 Traditional leaders and 2 LGA staff). The quantitative data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics while thematic content analysis was used to analyse the interview data collected. The study revealed that majority of the respondents believed that livestock production is on the decline. This was further buttressed by the key informant interview conducted in the study. The informant drew their views from various factors which include security challenges, cattle rustling and poor access to land resources like land and water in Bauchi State. The study also revealed that livestock production is moderately commercialized in Bauchi State, Nigeria. the key informants interviewed believed that livestock production has not been fully commercialized due to reasons bothering on poor knowledge, high interests’ rates on loans and slow government interventions in Bauchi State. And finally, the study revealed that cattle, sheep and goat are the most dominant livestock produced in Bauchi State during this study.