Bioeconomic Modelling of Optimal Livestock Enterprise Mix for Sustainable Intensification in Nigerian Mixed Farming Systems

This study develops bioeconomic models for identifying optimal livestock enterprise combinations that simultaneously achieve sustainable intensification goals of improved productivity, resource use efficiency, soil health maintenance, and household income growth in Nigerian mixed farming systems. Mixed crop-livestock systems are the dominant farming system across Nigeria's Guinea savanna zone, and livestock enterprise choice and integration intensity significantly determine both agricultural sustainability and household economic performance. Identifying optimal enterprise mixes under Nigerian conditions requires bioeconomic modelling that integrates biophysical and economic systems in ways that are system-specific and locally calibrated. This study develops a whole-farm bioeconomic model integrating nutrient flow, feed balance, crop-livestock interaction, and household economic components for representative farming systems in Kaduna, Niger, and Enugu States. Model parameterisation uses primary data from 120 carefully monitored farms supplemented by experimental data on nutrient cycling, feed conversion, and crop-livestock interaction coefficients. Multi-objective optimisation generates Pareto frontiers of enterprise combinations across income, soil health, and labour use efficiency objectives. Scenario analysis examines performance under climate change and market price variation. Findings reveal that the optimal enterprise mix differs substantially across the three farming system typologies, with northern systems favouring cattle-sorghum integration and southern systems favouring pig-cassava and poultry-vegetable combinations. Organic matter cycling from livestock to crops is the most consistently important co-benefit across all systems. The study contributes original bioeconomic models for three Nigerian farming system types and recommends their use as advisory tools in agricultural extension and development planning.

Keywords: bioeconomic modelling, mixed farming, sustainable intensification, livestock enterprise, Nigeria.