Effect of livelihood diversification on income security of rural farming households in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed the effect of livelihood diversification on income security of the rural farming households in Osun State, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 161 registered farming households and data collected through a semi-structured questionnaire. The results obtained shows that farmers in the study area were mostly males (87.0%) and formally educated (73.9%) with an average age of 42years. Also, the result showed that arable crop farming (64.0%), livestock farming (41.6%) and poultry farming (59.0%) have higher livelihood diversification among the rural faming households in the study area. While majority of farming households 55.3% had high extent of livelihood diversification. However, age, household size, farming experience, source of labour and farm size positively influence farmers level of livelihood diversification in the study area. The result also reveals that majority (59.0%) of the respondents were income secure. The result on Probit regression model shows that farming experience, farm income, on-farm diversification, and farm size were the significant effect of livelihood diversification on income security. Thus, the result concludes that majority of farming households had high extent of livelihood diversification. Hence, it was recommended that farm households should diversify their sources of livelihood into non-farm so as to increase their earnings to bridge the poverty gap, also financial markets should be looked into by the government when formulating policy and developmental issues.