ASSESSMENT OF FARMER’S PARTICIPATION IN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES IN MOKWA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF NIGER STATE.

Abstract

This study assessed farmer’s participation in agricultural activities in Mokwa Local Government Area of Niger State. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 120 respondents who were small scale 0farmers.Primary data were collected using structure questionnaire complemented with interview schedule. Both descriptive and inferential; statistics were used to analyzed the data collected. The result of this study revealed that majority (82.5%) of the respondents fall within the age range of 21 - 55 years with a mean age of 39 years, while 82.6% of the respondents had secondary education and above. More so, about 64.2% of the responders attested to the effectiveness of cooperative societies in the study area. Logit regression analysis result showed that the value of coefficient of determination R2 was 0.5758 implying that about 58% of the variation in the dependent variable is explained by the independent variable in the logit regression model. The age, gender, household size educational status and farming experience were all significant at 1%, 5% and 10% respectively. This implies that one unit increase any of the variable will lead to an increase in the level of participation in an agricultural cooperative. It was therefore recommended that extension agents should enhance participation of farmers in agricultural cooperatives in order for them to benefit from activities that will improve their agricultural production.