Factors affecting the marketing of perishables agricultural produce in Minna metropolis, Niger State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined some of the factors affecting the marketing of perishable agricultural crops in Minna. A simple random sampling was used to select 100 respondents from three major markets. Data were obtained through interview with the use of a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results revealed that 70% of the marketers were within the ages of 31 to 50years and the marketing of these perishable crops is dominated by the female gender (69%). Analysis also show that 71% of the marketers had no contact with extension officers and consequently 73% had no access to credit facilities in the study area. Furthermore, majority of the marketers (61%) had marketing experience of between 6 to 15years. The marketers recorded most losses (58%) during transportation and 60% during loading and offloading. Using Tobit regression model, it was discovered that the t-value shows among other variables that four (4) were significant: education (X3), credit (X8), and cooperative (X9) positively influences marketing, indicating that a unit increase in any of the variables will have a positive impact in agricultural production. While transportation cost (X6) had a negative coefficient implying that the amount spent on transporting these crops creates a marketing margin. The sigma t-value = 14.142, implies that the overall model used is significant at 1%. The study concludes that small holder farmers are responsible for producing the nation’s food, but are faced by various constraints in marketing of these produce, hence it is recommended that farm household should be encouraged to have access to education, favorable credit condition, increased investment in rural and market infrastructure by the government and sensitization of the importance of cooperative membership by NGO’s among others.