EFFECTS OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES ON RICE PRODUCTION

ABSTRACT

The study focuses on the effect of agricultural cooperative on rice production in Yola-North ecological zone of Adamawa state, Nigeria and with the specific objective to describe the socio-economic characteristics of cooperative rice farmers and non-cooperative rice farmers, identify the various services provided by the farmer cooperative society rice farmers in the study area, estimate and compare the cost, returns and profit of rice production among cooperative and non-cooperative rice farmers in the study area, examine the effect of cooperatives on the production and profit level of rice farmers in the study area, assess the members satisfaction with the services provided by cooperative society, and to identify the constraints faced by the rice farmers in the study area. A three- stage sampling procedure was used for the study. The first stage was involved a purposive sampling of four (4) cooperatives. Second stage involved random sampling of twenty-five (25) each from the selected four (4) cooperatives. The last stage involved random sampling of a hundred (100) non-cooperative members in the study area. The primary data was obtained using structured questionnaire and data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Most of the rice farmers were male (64.15%), with the age bracket of 31-40 years (39.62%), most were married (67.92%), they had an educational level (77.36%) attended secondary school, their household size was medium (84.91%), most had farm size of less than 2 Ha (77.36%) and most of them didn’t mill their rice (81.13%).