Farm Labour Structure and Its Determinants among Cocoa Farmers in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigerian agriculture is characterized with the use of hoe-cutlass technology. This is because in Nigeria, most farming activities are carried out with the use of human labour. Hence, labour is a limiting factor in agricultural production in Nigeria. In cocoa production, there is an information gap regarding the structure of labour used. In view of this, it is therefore imperative for this study to investigate the structure of farm labour as well as the determinants of labour use in cocoa production in the study area. Stratified sampling technique was used to select one hundred respondents from the study area. Two high cocoa producing Local Government Areas (LGAs) were selected and from each LGA, five communities were randomly selected. Ten cocoa farmers were randomly selected from each community. The data collected from the respondents were analysed with descriptive as well as multivariate regression model. Descriptive analysis shows that majority (80%) of the respondents are small scale holders having between one and five hectares of cocoa farm. Most (44.0%) utilized sharecropping source of labour. Ninety-four percent of the farmers utilized hired labour for farm clearing while 61.0% and 51% of the farmers utilized family labour for harvesting and on-farm cocoa processing respectively. All the farmers used male labour for farm clearing while 60.0% utilized female labour for harvesting. The result of the multi-variate regression analysis shows that wage rate (p < 0.05), farm size (p < 0.01) as well farm income (p < 0.01) significantly affected the use of labour for cocoa production in the study area. The result of hypothesis testing shows that there is a significant relationship between labour structure and farm size, wage rate and labour cost. The paper however recommended that rural infrastructural facilities should be provided as this would encourage the youths to stay on farms thereby increases farm labour strength.