Assessment of dry season garden egg production among small-scale farmers in edu local government area of Kwara State, Nigeria
Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria (1,2,3)
Department of Agricultural Education, Kwara State College of Education, Lafiagi, Nigeria (4)
The study was carried out for the purpose of assessing dry season garden egg production among small-scale farmers in Edu Local Government Area of Kwara State. The study adopted a snowballing sampling technique to sample 120 small-scale garden egg farmers. Five research questions were formulated to achieve the objectives of this research work. Descriptive statistics, cost and return analysis and OLS regression were used to analyze data collected. Cost and return analysis shows that the total revenue generated from the sales of irrigated garden egg produce for a typical farmer was N 36,596.5k while the total fixed cost (depreciated) and variable input cost amounted to 1,279.22K to give a net farm income (NFI) of N 24,582.68k. The OLS regression results revealed that the coefficients of farm size and household size were positive and significant at the 1% and 10% levels of probability respectively. This implies that an increase in farm size by 1 ha will increase the production of dry season garden egg by 1 percent. While the results of stochastic production frontier estimate show that the parameters of labour, fertilizer and farm size were highly significant, chemical use was significant at 10% level. This result implies that the farmers were technically efficient in the use of labour, fertilizer, chemical and farm size. Therefore, it is recommended that farmers should be encouraged to form cooperative societies, whereby they can join their resources together to provide a cost-effective irrigation system. Also, government authorities and other non-governmental organizations are encouraged to give farmers fertilizers and other chemicals at subsidized rates. There is a need for revitalization of the marketing board in Nigeria to further strengthen the marketing of agricultural produce and reduce marketing, storage and transportation problems.