ABSTRACT 

This study is an attempt to critically examine and analyze the effects of land tenure related variables on farm productivity in Aboh Mhaise Local Government Area of Imo State which specifically examined the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, determined the systems of land tenure practiced by households, assessed the effects of the prevailing land tenure related-variables on the productivity of farmers, analyzed the factors influencing farmers' decision to adopt soil conservation practices and as well determined the relationship existing between household size, farm size and conservation expenditure. The socioeconomic characteristics gave that males accounted for the majority of the farmers (63%) against females who were a minority (37%). The marital status revealed clearly that they were majorly married given the high value of 58% in comparison to 25% for the single, 17% for the widowed (widows and widowers) and nothing for the divorced. 42% of the farmers had a least a primary education which is the reading and writing standard average in developing countries. Majority of the households had sizes between one and three as given by 57%, Size 4-6 stood at 40% while 7-9 had only 3%. Land acquired by inheritance accounted for about 50% of all the land used for farming in the study area. The average income of farmers using their inherited land had a minimum income of 20,000 (highest) and gift 8,000 (least). The multiple regression result for factors affecting productivity using the double-log form as the lead equation gave an R2value of 0.949 indicating that 94.9% of variation in the farmers' productivity was accounted for by the independent variables included in the model and the remaining 5.1% occurred due to error. Household size, capital invested, conservation expenditure, farm size and farming experience were all positive and significant at 5%, 1%, 1%, 1% and 10% respectively while distance was negative at 1% significance. The result of the profit model showed that conservation expenditure negatively affected the adoption of soil conservation techniques at 10%, while nonfarm income and own-land were positive at 10% and 1% respectively. The negative relationship between household size and conservation expenditure indicates that as household size increases, conservation expenditure reduces while the positive relationship between farm size and conservation expenditure is indicative of the fact that conservation expenditure will increase with a increase in farm size.