Application of satellite remote sensing to observe and analyse temporal changes of cocoa plantation in Ondo State, Nigeria

This study examined the changes in the area of land occupied by cocoa plantation in Ondo state in order to provide useful information for effective agricultural policy to increase cocoa yield as the leading export agricultural commodity in Nigeria. Satellite remote sensing technique was employed using satellite imagery of year 2000, 2002, 2014 and 2015 respectively acquired from Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat-8 OLI. The land cover of the study area was classified into six classes of cocoa plantation, forest, light forest and grassland, water body, bare surface and rock outcrop as well as settlement area. The result revealed that cocoa plantation occupied 31.3% in 2000, 32.7% in 2002, 41.4% in 2014 and 41.6% in 2015 respectively which depicts gradual increased in the area of land covered by cocoa plantation and its yield at the expense of other land cover classes which prove the potency of this tree crop of generating huge amount of foreign earning for supplementing revenue derived from crude oil in Nigeria. The area of land of other themes changes at different proportions but attention was on the cocoa plantation theme being focus in this research.