Analysis of Critical Facilities of Rice Value Chain Actors in Benue and Nasarawa States Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out to specifically to analyse the critical facilities of rice value chain actors in Benue and Nasarawa States, Nigeria. The population of the study comprised all rice value chain actors in the two states. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 320 respondents from the two states. Multi-stage sampling procedure, stratified:-purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used for the study. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, mean, standard deviations were used to analyse the data for the study. It was evident from the study that the pooled mean results indicated that producers’ most critical facilities were planters (97.8%), harvesters (97.2%) and threshers (97.2%) in Benue and Nasarawa States respectively. Sources of foundation seeds (98.7%), supply of foundation seeds (98.4%) and NPK: 27:13:13 (96.2%) were the most critical facilities to input suppliers. Electricity need (91.8%), de-stoners (90.2%) were the critical facilities to processors. Marketers’ value chain actors indicated transportation (74.7%) packaging (70.9%) and storage (63.3%) as their critical facilities in the rice value chain respectively. The study concluded that rice value chain actors are affected by the poor availability of critical facilities needed by the value chain actors in Benue and Nasarawa states. It was recommended that critical facilities should be made available by government for easy access by the various rice value chain actors at subsidized rate for their effective utilization and enhanced performance.