Differences in Food Crop Diversification between Male and Female Smallholder Farmers in Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed food crop diversification among smallholder male and female farmers in Kwara State, Nigeria. A two-stage sampling technique was used to select 384 respondents disaggregated into 197 males and 187 females. Percentages, mean and standard deviation and chart were used for data analysis. Findings showed that the mean number of food crop grown by male farmers was 4.8 while that of female was 3.3 and most (51.4% and 49.3%) of male and female farmers growing 3 and 5 crops at a time respectively. Findings from crop diversification index showed that most of male farmers fall into high diversification group (0.60-0.70) while most female farmers were moderately (0.50-0.60) diversified. It further shows that education, farm size and access to farm machineries and credit positively and significantly influence the extent of crop diversification among male and female smallholder farmers (P≥0.05). Male farmers were found to be highly diversified compared to female farmers. Extension education toward bridging gap in male and female farmers’ literacy, skills and training on crop diversification should be promoted.

Keywords: Crop diversification, food crop, herfindahl index, Tobit regression, smallholder farmers