The study examined the Hedonic price analysis of chicken meat cut in Bauchi State, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 586 households in the study area and data were collected through the use of structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the study revealed that most (96.9%) of the household heads were male and married (89.8%) with about 35.7% of them having secondary education and 30.0% take farming as their occupation. The study also revealed the mean age, mean household size and mean monthly household head income as 41 years, 8 person per household and N47,481.46, respectively. The results of the hedonic regression analysis revealed that, age of the household head, sex of chicken, types of chicken breed, marital status and market locations were the major factors influencing the price of chicken in the study area. The major constraints to chicken consumption were financial problem, high cost of chicken, health related problems, poor sanitary condition of meat vendors as well as high prices of other food items of necessities. It was therefore recommended that, federal/State governments should enhance economic boasting programmes to improve the income of consumers; there should be a concerted effort on the part of government and non-governmental bodies on measures of increasing animal feeds and feeding to boast animal production. More study also needs to be done on segmentation and differentiation of chicken meat cuts based on international standard.

The study examined the market concentration and efficiency of sweet melon and water melon in Gombe and Bauchi States, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 300 sweet melon and water melon marketers from 18 markets, among which 165 marketers were selected from Gombe and 135 from Bauchi States. Data were collected using structured questionnaires. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis. The gini-ratio analysis indicates that sweet melon and water melon retail marketers handled larger quantity of the commodities which amounted to 26,562 and 34,871 respectively. The same category of marketers also recorded the higher gini-ratio of 0.14 and 0.17, respectively. The marketing efficiency results revealed that retail sweet melon marketers recorded the highest efficiency of 53.08%. Conclusively, both sweet melon and water melon markets were highly efficient and concentrated, implying that there is perfect inequality in the distribution recorded which might be as a result of limited information access on prices and products availability. The study recommends the establishment of collaboration between private and public research and development programs to improve management practice, particularly the use of new available technology for time disposal and efficient marketing of sweet melon and water melon in the study area.

The study analyzed spatial price variation in maize and sorghum marketing in Kaduna State. The data set for this analysis was monthly average secondary prices from 1999-2015. Data was analyzed using Augmented Dicker Fuller (ADF) test and Cointegration test and was performed using Stata 14.2 version of software. The results of the analysis showed that prices were found to be stationary at level and first difference and there is co-integration between the reference market and other markets. The equilibrium relationship between the price of maize and sorghum in Saminaka market and other markets was found to be positive. The speed of adjustment to the long run for sorghum between Saminaka-Giwa, Saminaka-Makarfi, and Saminaka-Godogodo was -1.08, -0.98 and -1.03 respectively, while that of maize was -1.98, -1.56, and -1.02. Implying that variation in prices are fully transmitted within a period of one month. It is recommended that government should ensure improvement of the operational environment of the marketers thereby drastically reducing transfer cost involved in the movement of grains across spatially separated markets.

The study analyzed economic efficiency of small-holder wheat farmers around Hadejia Valley Irrigation scheme in Jigawa, State Nigeria. Multi-stages sampling procedure was used to select 346 wheat farmers from the study area. Data were collected with the aid of questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyzed the data.  The stochastic frontier analysis results indicated that a unit increase in the use of land, fertilizer, labour and herbicide contributed to wheat output by 0.577, 0.341, 0.078 and 0.174 respectively. The predicted technical, allocative and economic efficiencies were 0.76, 0.32 and 0.24 respectively. This implies that wheat farmers were not fully efficient and output could have been increased by 24% and about 68% of cost would have been saved. Furthermore, tobit regression results revealed that age of the farmers positively affected technical (0.0012, p<0.10), allocative (0.0025, p<0.05) and economic (0.0023, p<0.01) efficiencies of wheat farmers’ production in the study area. The sex of the wheat farmers was significant (0.0472, p<0.05) and positively affecting wheat farmers technical efficiency. Education of the wheat farmers significantly (p<0.10) and negatively affected their technical (-0.0021) inefficiencies, access to extension service was influencing both technical (- 0.0223, p<0.10) and economic (- 0.0789, p<0.10) inefficiencies negatively. The study concluded that wheat farmers were not fully efficient and more output (24%) could be achieved with the same level of inputs as indicated by the increasing return to scale of 1.197. The study therefore, recommended that concerted efforts should be made towards training farmers on appropriate inputs combination by extension agents to   improve  and boost wheat production in the study area.