Nexus of Agricultural Commercialization among Farming Households in Southwest, Nigeria

The study was designed to assess nexus of agricultural commercialization of farming households in Southwest, Nigeria. The study determined the extent of agricultural commercialization; estimated the determinants of agricultural commercialization; and examined various constraints militating against farming households in the study area. Multi stage sampling technique was used to collect data from 300 farmers with the aid of structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, Household Commercialization Index, Tobit regression model was used to analyze the data collected. From the result, it was revealed that 88.3% of the respondents were males, and majority (87.3%) of them were married with mean age of 51 years. The mean value of household size was 7 persons and that of years spent in schools was 9.4 years. From the findings, the mean value of years of farming experience was 15.98. Majority (68.3%) of the sampled farmers used inherited land with mean farm size of 2.74 hectares. The result of household commercialization index showed that among all the crops sampled, none attained a ratio of 30%. Maize commercialization was the highest with a ratio of 26%. Cassava ranked second with a ratio of 22.13%. Yam commercialization ranked third with a ratio of 21.81%. The result of Tobit regression for the determinants of household commercialization index depicted that the coefficients of years spent in school, experience in farming, farm size, access to farm mechanization and number of visits of extension services were all significant at various probability levels and with different signs influencing agricultural commercialization in the study area. Agricultural commercialization was however fraught with multiple constraints with price fluctuation being the highest. Therefore, it was concluded the farmers needed the government intervention to boost agricultural commercialization and alleviate poverty in the area. It is therefore recommended that there should be focus on training farmers to view farming as a business; equipping farmers with marketing and negotiating skills. Also, food importation should be totally discouraged to enhance large scale and massive food production in the country.