Analysis of Small Scale Cassava Farmers Productivity for Sustainable Agriculture in Oyo State Nigeria

International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VI, Issue IX, September 2019 | ISSN 2321–2705

Analysis of Small Scale Cassava Farmers Productivity for Sustainable Agriculture in Oyo State Nigeria

Olusegun. I. O. Adesiyan¹, Isaac. O. Oyewo², Oyedapo. M. Raufu¹

¹Department of Agricultural Economics, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria
²Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FCF), P.M.B. 5087 Jericho, Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract: – Using a cross sectional data for the analyses of the determinants of cassava productivity on small holder cassava farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the farmer’s farm specific and socio economic characteristics and inferential statistics was employed to analyse the determinant of crop production using 176 respondents. The result revealed that 73.9% of the farmers were male, 80.7% were married, farmers mean age was 50 years, mean household size was six (6) persons, 87.5% had farm size between 0.5-5.0 hectares, majority (89.2%) had one form of formal education while 82.4% relied on rain-fed farming system, cassava output was 37.50 tons and mean farm size used was 2.89 hectare while mean years of faming experience was 13.4 years. Estimated parameters with Cobb Douglas production functions show that farm size used, years of farming experience, farmers’ age, source of irrigation and income increased productivity at 1% respectively except farm management experience which reduced productivity at 10% level of significant. R² was 74% which explain the level of variation in the crop outputs as a result of the explanatory variables. It was however concluded that farm size, farmers’ age, years of farming experience, source of irrigation and farmers income were the major determinants of farm productivity in the study area. The study therefore recommended among others that informal training through extension services be conducted to educate farmers in other to have a sustainable and increase productivity and provision of another source of irrigation (mechanise) instead of depending on rain fed agriculture in the study area.

Keywords: Determinant, Sustainable, Land, Cobb Douglas, Fuzzy, Oyo State, Nigeria.

I. INTRODUCTION

Agricultural sector has always been an important component of Nigerian economy. The sector is almost entirely dominated by small scale resource poor farmers living in the rural areas, with farm holdings of 1-2 hectares, which are usually scattered over a wide area. (Ojo et al., 2009). The size-distribution of these holdings as defined by previous studies and evidenced in literature by (Olayide et al., 1980 and Dorward et al., 2005) as; Small-scale farms, ranges from 0.10 to 5.99-hectares, medium scale, 6.0-9.99 and large scale above 10 hectares.

Read More