Constraints to Farmers’ Labour Group Productivity in Eastern Kogi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Smallholder farmers in rural Nigeria face farm labour shortages and the need to find ways of dealing with this problem is therefore apt for food security and socioeconomic improvement. In an attempt to deal with this problem, Nigerians rural farmers constitute themselves into farmers' labour groups in other to meet their farm and non-farm labour needs. Apart from supplying farm and non-farm labour, farmers' organizations can also bring about farmer-tofarmer extension service to members and non-members. Farmers' labour groups in eastern Kogi State adopt this extension strategy to share ideas, network with other farmers within the social system and develop managerial capability to handle their farm problems. A total of 160 farmers' labour groups were identified by the researchers and all the labour groups were purposively selected. And from each of the identified farmers' labour groups, the heads of each group were selected, thereby giving rise to 160 respondents for the study. Structured interview schedule was administered on the respondents. Data collected was presented using frequency distribution, percentage and mean statistics. Researchers' findings revealed that, joint-problem solving (M =2.8), increased in farmers' managerial ability (M =2.7), promotion of knowledge-sharing (M= 2.5), and improved farmer-to-farmer networking (M =2.4) were some of the extension services rendered by farmers' labour groups to their members. In carrying out their activities, farmers' labour groups face a lot of challenges such as high poverty level of farmers (M =3.0), low extension contact and poor health status of farmers (M = 2.7 respectively), and ruralurban migration (M=2.6) among others. Policy statements that can improve the socioeconomic status of farmers, strengthen rural organizations and strong research-extension-farmer-linkage were suggested. Journal Seek, Scientific Commons, and http://journal.aesonnigeria.org Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) http://www.ajol.info/index.php/jae Results and Discussion Socio-economic variables of respondentsThe socio-economic characteristics of the respondents were presented in Table 1. According to the table majority (75.00%) of the farmers were males with a mean age of about 51 years. Majority (45.63%) of these farmers had primary education, though 30.00% had secondary education and only 3.13% of the farmers had tertiary education. The findings revealed that, 78.76% of the respondents are literate, and high or fairly literate farmers may be favourably disposed to accept and adopt farm technologies than the illiterate ones. Adejo, et al (2012) reported that the more educated a farmer is the more he/she becomes more civilized and informed about scientific agricultural practices. The table further revealed that most (55.00%) of the farmers had a household size of between 1-5 persons with a mean farm size of about 3 hectares and mean farming

The Role of Young Farmer Horticulture Group on Improving Entrepreneur Behavior in the Special Region of Yogyakarta Indonesia

“…However, sales through the group-based auction market that has been running for a long time needs to be done innovation and network improvement in order to continue to develop a business. The role of group need to be strengthened by managing agricultural machinery and providing labor, as [33]. In the field, this effort has been made but is more personal.…”

The Motivation of Young Chili Farmers in Sandy Land of Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

“…However, the auction market's development still needs to be enhanced by building a more comprehensive network. Efforts to build networks can increase farmers' bargaining to determine commodity prices described by previous research [11,22,23,24], stating that farmers will get a better bargaining price advantage as a group. However, sales through group-based auction markets running for a long time need innovation and network improvement to continue developing.…”

Farm Labour Preferences among Small-scale Arable Crop Farmers in Akwa Ibom State, Southern Nigeria

“…In Nigeria, farm labour composition for small-scale producers majorly revolved around the family labour source, hired labour and group labour sources. Group labour is one of the social capitals that involves the gathering of two or more common-minded people (common among women) with a common goal and identity bound in a formal relationship and are engaged in rotational farming among members (Francis et al, 2000;Saliu & Ojandage, 2008;Edoka et al, 2014). The use of machines and animal power as sources of labour are not widespread among small-scale or peasants' farmers in the south-south region of Nigeria.…”