Impact of Credit Access on Crop Farmers’ Well-being in Osun State, Southwestern Nigeria

Saisho A.e ,Saka J.o ,L.o Lamidi ,M I Oguntade ,Adegbuji U.o

doi:10.7176/jesd/10-4-11

Abstract

The role of credit in improving the well-being of farmers cannot be overemphasized and it has been discovered to be of great importance for the development of agriculture in Nigeria. Unfortunately, there has been low rate of its accessibility which consequentially affecting well-being of farmers in rural area. This study thus investigated the impact of credit access on crop farmers’ well-being in Osun state, Southwestern, Nigeria and data were collected using structured questionnaire administered to 150 farmers selected by multistage sampling techniques. The result shows that the crop farmers were in their active economic productive age with mean age 41years and majority obtained credit from Agricultural Credit Cooperative. Determinant factors influencing crop farmers’ access to credit in the study areas were age (p <0.10), marital status (p<0.05) and years of membership in farmers’ association (p<0.01)while significant credit variables affecting farmers’ well-being were amount of credit needed (p<0.01), credit purpose (p<0.01), credit ration(p<0.01), interest rate (p< 0.10) and disbursement lag (p<0.01).Thus, the study recommended that farmers should be encouraged to form groups for credit accessibility and use it for the farming purpose meant for to improve their well-being. Keywords: Credit, Credit Status, Credit Access, Well-being, Crop Farmers. DOI : 10.7176/JESD/10-4-11

Highlights

Agriculture has remained the dominant contributor to the rural sector of the Nigerian economy owing to its source of employment to about 60% of the workforce and array of commodities produced across the different regions of the country
Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages and means while logit and tobit regressions were specified to examine the determinants of credit access and the effect on well-being of farmers respectively
4.0 Results and Discussion 4.1 Personal Characteristic of Farmers Table 1 shows that the mean age of the crop farmers in the study area was 41 years but 38.7% were in the age range 31-40 years, 26.7% were between 41-50 years and 20.0% were above 50 years of age

Summary

Introduction

Agriculture has remained the dominant contributor to the rural sector of the Nigerian economy owing to its source of employment to about 60% of the workforce and array of commodities produced across the different regions of the country. Credits may be financial or they may consist of goods and services (Ashaolu et al, 2011) It accessibility plays a crucial role in agricultural rural development, productivity, growth, economic of scales, food security, utilities to satisfy wider market and standard of living by breaking vicious cycle of poverty (Ololade and Olagunju, 2013; Ayegba, 2013; Ugwumba and Omojola, 2013). Both in relation to objective measures, such as household income, educational resources and health status; and subjective indicators such as happiness, perceptions of quality of life and life satisfaction (Statham and Chase, 2010) Though, this may depend on the impact of economic activities in which the farmers are involved and what enhances the well-being of a particular farmer may be of negative impact to others

Methods

Results

Conclusion