WELFARE STATUS OF COCOA FARMING HOUSEHOLDS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study was designed to assess the welfare status of cocoa farmers in Ondo State, Nigeria; determine the effects of socio-economic and demographic variables on the households’ welfare status and examine the level of welfare inequality among the households. The primary data used for the study were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire from a representative sample of 60 cocoa farmers in seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) which are known to have preponderance of cocoa farmers in Ondo State. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the socio-economic and demographic variables of households, Gini coefficient and index of dissimilarity were used to assess inequalities in the welfare status, cross tabulation and Chi-square test were used to test for the existence of relationship between welfare index and some socio-economic and farm specific variables while regression analysis was used to assess the effects of some socio-economic variables on cocoa farmers’ welfare status. The result of the analysis revealed that 83.3 percent of the respondents were male. Most of them were old. Their mean age was 59.85 years while the mean household size was 6. About 76.7 percent of the farmers were educated, while 23.3 percent had no formal education. Only 50 percent of them had some field training on cocoa production. Most of the sampled cocoa farmers are small scale producers with about 70 percent of them producing less than 1000 kg of cocoa beans in a cropping season. The mean cocoa output was 877.50 kg. Income from cocoa production was low with an average of N 139,830. The GPS estimate of farm size ranged from 0.01 to 10 hectares with mean of 2.4ha. The majority (60 percent) of the respondents had their farms over 1 km distance from homestead, with a mean distance of 24.02 km. Most of the cocoa farms were old with about 56.7 percent being above 30 years, with a mean of 29.88 years. About 78.3 percent of cocoa farms cultivated by the respondents were previously forest which implies that the lands had not been exhausted before being used to establish the cocoa farms. About 81.7 percent of the respondents had total household income of N 300,000 or less during the survey period. The mean dependency ratio was 1.43. The number of rooms occupied by the respondents’ households varied between two and sixteen with mean of 5 rooms. All the respondents in the study area used iron sheets as their roofing material. Majority (70 percent) lived in mud wall and mud brick houses, 51.7 percent lived in houses that needed major repairs. About 60 percent of the households had no electricity supply, 95 percent used wood as source of fuel for cooking, 70 percent had no access to safe drinking 3 water, 71.7 percent had no toilet facility within their house premises and 70 percent lived in houses with windows that are not protected with wire netting against mosquitoes and other flies. Communication was not a problem in the study area because most of the farmers owned functional mobile phones, radio set as well as television set. The Gini coefficient for the welfare index was 0.2049, and index of dissimilarity was 0.1161, indicating a relatively low degree of inequality in welfare index. This shows that the sampled cocoa farmers were not much better than one another in terms of welfare status. Also the Gini coefficient and index of dissimilarity for income distribution was 0.5249 and 0.3513; respectively, thus, indicating that there was some level of inequality in the distribution of total income of households. The result of bivarate analysis of the relationship between welfare index and socio-economic determinants of welfare revealed that household size, dependency ratio, farmers’ training and GPS farm size had significant relationship with welfare index. Also the regression of income per capita on socio-economic and farm specific variables revealed that household size, dependency ratio, GPS farm size and GPS distance to homestead played some roles in determining the welfare status of cocoa farmers in the study area. The study revealed that most of the cocoa farmers were living in environments which lack the basic amenities required for a decent standard of life. The key variables which affected household welfare in the study area were household size, dependency ratio, distance of farm from homestead and farm size.