Socioeconomic determinants of plantain production in Ovia North East local government area in Edo State

Abstract

The study centered on socio-economic determinants of plantain production in Ovia North East of Edo State, Nigeria. The study was conducted to update existing literature on the plantain production enterprise. A sample size of one hundred and twenty (n = 120) farmers in plantain propagation were randomly selected from the study area. Respondents were interviewed with structured questionnaire. Simple descriptive statistics and multiple regression were used to analyze the data collected. The result revealed that 68.3 % of the farmers were male while 31.7% were female.The mean age of plantain farmers was 53.3years. The mean farm size was 7.24Ha. The mean annual income of farmers was ₦268,666.67. Majority of farmers (60.8%) had no form of formal education. Majority of the respondents (54.1%) had no contact with extension workers. The study revealed that 85% of the farmers practiced bush burning. The regression result revealed that R² was 0.81 which implies that over 80% of the changes in number of local technologies adopted by the plantain farmers were determined by the independent variable. Some variable like education, farm income and local knowledge in plantain production were significant. Among others, it was recommended that plantain farmers should be assisted with technologies where there are gaps as in staking, irrigation and wind-break erection in plantain production.

Keywords: Socioeconomic, Technologies, Farmers, Plantain production