The Contribution of Farming Practices to

This Book assessed the effect of farming on vegetation in Benue State. Some of the objectives of the Book included to identify and describe the major farming practices in the study area; examine the relationship between vegetation changes and farming practices; and to perform vegetation change detection and analyse the spatio-temporal change of the vegetation in the study area. Information on farming activities and vegetation change was obtained through personal interviews; questionnaire; onsite assessment and the acquisition of remotely sensed data of 1986 and 2007 covering the study area to perform change detection. The data was coded, extracted and analysed using frequencies and simple percentages while Ilwis Academic 3.2a was used to analyse land-cover change from the satellite images. The change detection and analysis done revealed that, vegetation covered 72% of the study area in 1986 but has changed to 59% in 2007. This gives a loss or change of 13% to other land-cover types due to farming practices.