Assessment of the role of cooperative societies in cocoa production by smallholders in Owan-West local government area of Edo state, Nigeria.

Abstract

Multi-stage and proportional sampling procedure was used to select102 respondents made up 60 cooperators chosen from 8 registered cooperative societies and 42 non-cooperators in the study area. A well structured interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents and analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, means and t-test analysis. Results showed that the mean ages of cooperators and non-cooperators were50 years and 48 years respectively, 53% of the cooperators and 26% of non-cooperators have been engaged in cocoa farming between 11 and 25 years and most (82%cooperators and 71% non-cooperators) of the respondents had low educational background as they only spent 6 years and 7 years respectively in formal education. The mean output and income of cooperators were 5,716.67kg and N70, 116.69 while the mean for non-cooperators were 7,107.14kg and N78, 571.43. The cooperators and non-cooperators mean farm sizes were 5 hectares and 6 hectares respectively. Generally, the cooperators actively participated in cooperative activities except in seminars in which their participation was low. Cooperative societies in the study area played leading roles in cocoa production as they assisted cooperators in marketing of produce, storage of harvested products, supply of inputs and organizing workshops but negligible influence on cooperators' output and income. Results of hypotheses tested in the study revealed that the farm output and income of non-cooperators were significantly higher than that of cooperators contrary to expectation Recommendation was made that cooperative societies should encourage their members to attend seminars and workshops as a way of building up members' capacity to acquire knowledge and information.

Agro-Science Vol. 7 (1) 2008: pp. 47-54