Profitability analysis of vegetable production in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the Profitability Analysis of selected vegetable farmers in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State. Multi stage sampling techniques was adopted. First stage involves a simple random selection of 13 communities from the 20 communities present in YELGA. The second stage involves the selection of five (5) vegetable (bitter leaf) farmers each from the selected communities summing up to One hundred (100) farmers (bitter leaf). Sixty-nine (69) questionnaires were retrieved out of one hundred (100) copies and used for the analysis. The result indicates that 58.0% of the respondents fall between ages ranged of 20-39. Majority of the vegetable farmers were married (44.9%), females (69.1%) dominated vegetable production in the study area, 50.7% had family size of 1-4 people in their households, 82.6% had one form of education or the other. Total Fixed Cost (TFC) was ₦820,000.00 while Total Variable Cost (TVC) was ₦270,500.00 with Net Farm Income (NFI) of ₦377,800.00 during production period. Return on investment was ₦0.35 which implies profitability of vegetable production in the study area. The study identified inadequate storage facilities, lack of organized market, inadequate planting materials, inadequate finance, high cost of transportation, lack of land, high spread of pest and disease, high cost of labor, inadequate water supply and lack of modern technologies as the major problems of vegetable farmers in the study area. It was therefore recommended that Government should provide vegetable farmers with storage facilities organized market structure in order to encourage them increase their scale of production.