LABOUR UTILISATION AND PRODUCTIVITY IN COCOA PRODUCTION IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The current estimation of the Nigerian population claimed that the rural sector harbours over 75 per cent of Nigeria's population, yet it is most unlikely that labour supply distribution is in favour of the farm sector. Nevertheless, the cocoa export requirement for the nation's foreign earnings anchors very auspiciously on human labour productivity which makes labour-use pattern and productivity of serious consideration. This study empirically examined labour utilization and productivity in the cocoa sector of Ondo State. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Two hundred cocoa beans farmers were randomly selected for the study across the study area. Descriptive statistics, costs and returns analysis, income expenditure ratio, stochastic labour input use requirement cost frontier function were applied in the empirical analysis. The generalized likelihood ratio test and the student t-test were used to test the working hypotheses. The study revealed mean age of the farmers as 56 years Implying that an average farmer is physically active. Given the gender disparity, there was a little female Participation in producing cocoa while 73.0 per cent of the farmers were males. An average farmer has spent 26 years in cocoa production. It was observed that 55.0 percent of the farmers have large family size of 5 to 8 members thus, capable of meeting immediate labour requirements. Average age of cocoa farms of 24 years indicates marginal diminishing returns to labour. Farmers travel average of 11.3 kilometers, no close proximity of farms from farmers' settlements. Empirical results shows that to augment the traditional source of farm labour (family labour), sharecropper labour was the major labour-type significantly utilised (67.0 percent) by the farmers. Adult male labour was responsible for the largest proportion of labour utilized averaging about 69.0 per cent in terms of gender categorisation of labour. The cost and returns analysis revealed that cocoa beans production is profitable with gross margin of #15,092.00· per hectare' and income-expenditure ratio of #0.29 for every one naira invested. The Cobb-Douglas labour input-use requirement (cost) frontier estimates obtained indicated that only 5.5 percent of the sampled farmers are utilizing labour exactly on the labour factor requirement (cost) frontier, while 94.5 percent are cost inefficient in their labour allocations because they overused labour above the minimum cost frontier. The degree of overuse of labour is measured at 4.9 % which indicate by how much cocoa farmers exceeds the percentage of labour efficiency in the cost frontier. None of the farmers allocated farm labour below the minimum cost efficiency frontier since no farmer has labour-use allocative efficiency index ofless than.unity. The coefficients of the parameters estimated from the input-use requirement (cost) function usmg stochastic labour use frontier observes that real value added of raw cocoa produced (#), expenditures on labour use (N) and expenses on agrochemicals sprayed (N) have a priori positive signs and are statistically significant at 5 per cent level. As unit price of raw cocoa and input prices are being increased, there would be increase in (cost) labour demand to meet the labour use requirement resulted thereof. The coefficient of determinant of inefficient labour allocation is positive for age of farmers and highly significant at the 5.0 % level. This is the most important policy variable for efficient labour (cost) allocation among the cocoa farmers in the study area.