Assessment of farmers participation in agricultural cooperatives in Mokwa Local Government Area, Niger State

Abstract

This study assessed farmers’ participation in agricultural cooperatives in Mokwa Local Government Area of Niger State. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 120 respondents who were small scale farmers. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaire complemented with interview scheduled. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data collected. The result of this study revealed that majority (82.5%) of the respondents fall within the age range of 21-55 years with mean of 39 years, while 82.6% of the respondents had secondary education and above. More so, about 64.2% of the respondents attested to the effectiveness of cooperative societies in the study area. Logit regression analysis result showed that the value of coefficient of determination R2 was 0.5758 implying that about 58% of the variation in the dependent variable is explained by the independent variables in the logit regression model. The age, gender, household size, educational status and farming experience were all significant at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively, and directly related to participation in agricultural cooperatives in the study are. This implies that one unit increase in any of the variable will lead to an increase in the level of participation in an agricultural cooperative. It was therefore recommended that extension agents should enhance participation of farmers in agricultural cooperatives in order for them to benefit from activities that will improve on the agricultural production.