UTILIZATION OF LABOUR AMONG YAM FARMERS IN OGOJA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA
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Abstract
The study assessed the utilization of labour among yam farmers in Ogoja Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria. Objectives were to; ascertain the socio-economic characteristics of respondents; identify types of labor utilized; determine the farming operations
in which available labour was utilized; ascertain factors influencing labor utilization. A multistage sampling procedure was used to obtain data from 126 respondents and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results revealed that majority (66.7%) of the farmers were males, 40.5% were above 50 years, majority (64.3%) were married, 46.3% had secondary education, most (53.9%) had household size of above 6 persons and a larger proportion (46%) had farm size of between 1-2 plots. The most utilized labour was family labour, with X of 3.39. The farming operations in which family labour was mostly utilized were planting (69.9%) and fertilizer application (69%). However, hired labour was mostly used in staking (65.1%) and mound making (63.5%) operations. The findings also showed that, the most perceived factor that influenced labour utilization was rural urban migration with X of 3.58. Results of the chi-square statistics revealed a statistically significant association between type of labour used and yam farming operation with tcal (145.67) > P value (21.03) at 0.05 significant level. It was therefore recommended that the government should supplement manual labour with mechanised labour to discourage rural-urban migration as well as to address the need for specialized skills and ease difficult tasks.
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