Labour-Use Efficiency of Rice Farmers in Nigeria’s North-Central Region

Abstract

A cross-sectional data collected through structured questionnaire coupled with an interview schedule from 360 rice farmers selected via a multi-stage sampling technique was used to determine the labour efficiency of rice farmers in Nigeria’s North-Central region. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the 2020 cropping season data. The empirical evidences showed a farming population that is gender biased due to gender stereotype, thus affected women’s access to and control over productive resources. Besides, economic-productive people that explored pecuniary advantages to achieve economies of scale engaged in cultivation of thinly uneconomic holding. The poor economic status of the farm families made most of the farmers to rely on family labour for farm operations, thus keeping most of their children and young ones out of school. Furthermore, most of the farmers were fairly efficient in the use of labour with little technical support required to enable them to achieve optimum labour efficiency level (frontier point). However, the empirical evidences showed competition for labour demand between farm and off-farm activities, and, conservative and complacency attitudes due to longevity in the enterprise to be the factors that affected labour efficiency. Therefore, the study calls for gender mainstreaming in the agricultural budget to overcome women’s challenge on productive resources; incentivized the enterprise viz. credit provision; and, adoption of a bottom-to-top approach in research and practical demonstration approach in the transfer of innovative rice technologies.