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-to-farmer 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 rural-urban 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.

Keywords: Labour group, networking, rural-urban migration, small-holder farmers, Igala