Impact of Farmers’ Cooperative Society Membership on Rural Household Livelihood Development in Oyo State
- May 20, 2020
- Posted by: RSIS
- Categories: Agriculture, IJRSI
International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VII, Issue V, May 2020 | ISSN 2321–2705
M.O Olojede, W.A. Rasaki, A. Adeoye, O. Amoo, A.I. Olayanju
Oyo State College of Agriculture and Technology, Igboora, Oyo State, Nigeria
Abstract: – The study examined the impact of farmer’s cooperative societies on livelihood development of rural households in Oyo State, Nigeria. Multistage random sampling technique was adopted to select 240 cooperator and 120 non-cooperator farmers from each village to make three hundred and fifty- nine respondents (360). Data collected were subjected to descriptive analysis, Probit Analysis and T- test analysis. The findings revealed that 66.53% and 70.00% of the cooperators and non-cooperators respectively were male with mean age of 45 years. The study also revealed that 99.33% of the respondents were full time farmers and that farmers’ cooperative was their main source of agricultural credit. Pseudo R2 value of 0.37 revealed that about 37% variation in livelihood development of cooperators of rural household in the study area are explained by the various independent variable such as age, sex, marital status, religion and household size etc. Farm size, educational level and membership of cooperative society have a positive significant effect on livelihood development of cooperators at 1%, 5% & 10% level respectively. Test of mean difference between cooperators and non-cooperators in the study area showed that there is a significant difference (α 0.01) between the various socioeconomic distributions of non-cooperators and cooperators tested in the study area which implies that cooperator perform better than non-cooperator farmers in term of income, productive assets and land cultivated in the study area.
Keywords: Impact, cooperators, non- cooperators livelihood development.
I. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture remains the main stay of the rural economy in Nigeria as it provides employment for about 70% of the work force. However, less than 50% of the country’s cultivable agricultural land is under cultivation because small-holders’ farmers often use rudimentary production techniques to cultivate most of the land thereby resulting in low productivity (Manyong et al, 2005). The small-holder farmers are constrained by many problems including those of poor access to modern inputs, inadequate credit facilities, poor infrastructure, inadequate access to markets, environmental degradation, and inadequate agricultural extension services (Venerakumaran, et al, 2005).
