ANALYSIS OF SESAME PRODUCTION IN AGAIE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Recently there has been a sharp decline in sesame production in Niger State which may affect the livelihood of the farmers as well as production of the enterprise. The study therefore carried out an analysis of production of sesame in Niger State to examine the reasons for the decline in production as well as the current profitability of the enterprise. The socio-economic characteristics of sesame farmers in this study describes and examine the profitability of sesame production. Factors affecting sesame production in the study area were also highlighted. Three stage sampling technique was used for this research. A purposive selection of Agaie Local Government was used at the first stage due to it predominance of sesame production in the area. The selection of five 5 villages from the local government area was randomly in the second stage, while the third entails a random selection of 120 sesame farmers from the selected village. Primary data collected through survey method were evaluated using a descriptive statistics, costs and returns, and multiple regressions model. The socio-economic characteristics results show that 74% of sesame farmers were within the age bracket of 15-45%years. 63% were literate, 94% were married and 53% had 1-2 hectares of farmland. Also, 82% of the farmers had no access to credit and 54% belong to cooperative society. The result of the costs and return analysis shows that sesame production is profitable in Agaie LGA with a net farm profit of N8,385.53.