Irrigation, land tenure, and crop market participation in Nigeria

Irrigation infrastructure and formal land tenure are the two important channels through which smallholder land assets are theorised to support crop market participation. Using five waves of the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel (2010–2024) and a double-hurdle model, we separately identify the determinants of the decision to sell and the intensity of sales, and test whether these two channels operate as theory predicts. Irrigation share is the main predictor of commercialisation, raising the probability of market participation by 15.4% points and the conditional share of production sold by 12.5% points, the only regressor simultaneously large, significant, and positive on both margins, yet irrigated plots account for just 2.3% of the national sample. Formal land title, by contrast, has no measurable relationship with market entry and is negatively associated with selling intensity, a reversal of the standard property-rights prediction. These findings point to irrigation investment as the highest-return commercialisation policy while highlighting the need for institutional reform of land rights.