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This study examined the marketing of edible mushroom in three villages (Alesi, Ekukunela and Ohon) in Central Cross River State, Nigeria. The marketing of edible mushroom in the state offers job opportunities for both skilled and unskilled rural population at farm gate and offers market employment opportunities for middlemen (wholesalers and retailers), enable talent utilization and stimulation of increase in edible mushroom production. The socioeconomic characteristics of sellers, profit margin and marketing efficiency were the main focus. One hundred and twenty respondents were interviewed at three different markets in three selected villages in Central Cross River State, Nigeria, namely: Alesi, Ekukunela and Ochon. These markets were chosen because of the large number of edible mushroom sellers in them. However, the sellers were randomly selected. This study revealed that the marketing of edible mushroom in Central Cross River State was completely dominated by women and children, with monthly profit margin for Alesi, Ekukunela and Ochon markets as N60,000.00, N56,000.00 and N52,000.00 per annual respectively. This suggests that edible mushroom marketing business was lucrative. The concentration of sellers is low while entry is free. The markets are thus prefect competitive markets. The regression analysis, however, revealed that of all the marketing costs, transportation had the most significant impact on the returns of sellers in all the studied markets. It was therefore recommended that farmers should form Mushroom Grower and Marketing Cooperative to enable them obtain loans from banks. Banks should provide loans with low interest rate to both small and large-scales genuine mushroom farmers and marketers (not politicians, motor park boys or civil servant). Furthermore, extension agents should monitor beneficiaries of such loans to ensure that the farmers or marketers do not divert funds to buy motorcycles , cars or marry more wives and also they should ensure regular repayment of loans by loan beneficiaries. The study also recommended that government should implement action-research type of programs that integrate institutional-technical and socioeconomic aspect of mushroom farming and include post harvest and marketing aspects either through cooperatives or export processing zones. Finally, the study recommended that serious attention should be paid to improve the markets to perfect markets for optimal efficiency.

The study evaluates the influence of credit policies on institutional lending behaviour of farmers in Cross River State. It also ascertains the relationship between credit and agricultural development. Using econometric methods, results reveal that credit quota and portfolio lending devices and pursuit of cheap interest rate polices has negative effect on credit supply while policies associated with plough back of rural savings mobilization and availability of guarantee were marginally effective. Results also show that farmers demand for credit was influenced mainly by the availability of credit subsidies and availability of guarantees. Also, the study showed that a positive but inelastic relationship exist between credit and agricultural output. Finally, it was revealed that some factors which militate against the effectiveness of agricultural credit polices include lack of viable technologies, defective production environments and wrong perception of the roles of credit in development. An agenda for credit policy reforms stressed the need to evolve and adopt policies, which foster desirable financial technologies, which serve both the interest of institutional borrowers and lenders.