The Persistence of Small Farms and Poverty Levels in Nigeria: An Empirical Analysis

Temidayo Gabriel Apata, M.A.Y. Rahji, K.D. Samuel and O.a Igbalajobi

No 53001, 111th Seminar, June 26-27, 2009, Canterbury, UK from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Small farmers are one of the more disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in Nigeria. Studies have shown that majority of people living in absolute poverty can be found on small farms with half in this group undernourished. The study examined heterogeneity in circumstances and diversity in rural agriculture, the persistence of small farms, poverty and institutional development and facilities. Data for this study came from Nigerian living Standard Survey (NLSS) which covered the two periods 1994/2004. The data set consists of 9550 respondents’ but only 8264 cases were useful for this study. The index of heterogeneity at 29.1 indicated persistence of small farms in the two periods under consideration. Persistence of small farms and poverty are closely related (r = 0.674). The poverty differential in the two surveys data revealed that poverty increased by 14.72%. Disaggregation analysis indicated that institutional development and facilities improved farm outputs, diversification to non-farm and reduction in poverty. Access to these institutional facilities can enable the small farmers to rearticulate their livelihood activities. Policy makers need to show more commitment to develop agriculture through identifying and providing the capacity need of small farmers in order for them to absorb and used whatever modern techniques introduced.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; International Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16
Date: 2009-08-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-dev
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/53001/files/104.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaa111:53001

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.53001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 111th Seminar, June 26-27, 2009, Canterbury, UK from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().