Analysis of Incidence, Depth and Severity of Poverty Status among Livestock Farmers in South Western Nigeria

Abstract

This paper relies on a study that attempts to analyze the incidence, depth and severity of poverty among livestock farmers in Southwestern Nigeria. The data for the study was collected in the Soughtwestern area of Nigeria. The sampling method employed for the study was multistage sampling procedure. Three towns were re randomly selected for the study. They are Oyo metropolis, Abeokuta metropolis and Ondo metropolis. Two hundred and seventy livestock farmers were randomly sampled for the southwestern Nigeria with 90 livestock producers sampled from each metropolis. The main analytical tool used for the study is the FGT weighted poverty index. The headcount ratio revealed that non-ruminant farmers have more of its population below the poverty line when ruminant and non ruminant farmers should be raised by 23 percent and 33 percent respectively while the income of the core-poor ruminant and non-ruminant farmers should be raised by 17 percent and 22 percent respectively in order to exit poverty. Results also reveal that poverty is more severe among non-ruminant livestock farmers than their ruminant livestock producer's counterpart. The study therefore concludes that ruminant livestock farmers are better off in terms of welfare than their no-ruminant counterparts.

Keywords: Poverty status, Livestock farmers, Southwestern Nigeria