Agro-Climatic Land Suitability Mapping for Sugarcane Production in Parts of Adamawa State, North-Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

In this paper, agro-climatic conditions were used in mapping out suitable sites for sugarcane production in the southern parts of Adamawa State, North-Eastern Nigeria. In search of more areas to diversify sources of revenue for the state, the researchers ventured into the aspect of sugarcane production to look for additional sites, different from the ones being cultivated presently. From the literatures reviewed in the course of this study, no work has been carried out on specifically mapping areas that will be suitable for sugarcane production in the State. Therefore, to fill this gap, this work was conceived. The study covers eleven Local Government Areas with total area of about 20,739 Km.2 Data on rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, sunlight, soil, relief and drainage were transformed into spatial datasets and integrated in the process of Weighted Sum overlay in ArcGIS 10.2 and in line with the FAO guidelines on suitability analysis for the sites selection. Four classes of suitability were arrived at, which are Most suitable, Moderated suitable, Marginally suitable and Not suitable sites for sugarcane cultivation. The result from this study revealed significant information on site selection for sugarcane cultivation in the study area. The results show that, most suitable areas cover a total area of about 850 Km2 (4% of study area), moderately suitable areas cover about 10,978 Km2 (53%), marginally suitable areas cover about 6,248 Km2 (30%) and not suitable areas 2,664 Km2 (13%). Thus, combining the areas that are most suitable and moderately suitable gives about 11,828 Km2 (57%) as total land that could support optimum growth and yield of sugarcane crop in the study area. This area is substantial enough to produce sugarcane in a quantity that can boost the economy of the State and the country at large. Therefore, the government of the State should key in to this potential area of economic diversification by inviting stakeholders in the area of sugarcane production to look into this finding with the aim at promoting sugarcane production as one of the major sources of income to the State