Women Farmers’ Perception of Constraints to Increased Crop Production in Oyo State

Abstract

The study investigated the perception of women farmers about constraints to increased crop production in Oyo State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting 150 women farmers who were interviewed.124 women farmers out of these actually completed the interview schedule. Thus actual sample size used was 124. Frequency counts, percentages and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient were used to analyze the data collected. Most of the respondents (85.5%) were between 20 and 49 years of age and 79.8% of them were married. 61.3% of respondents had farm sizes of less than 3 hectares. The results corroborate the findings of previous studies that most rural women were small-scale farmers who are confronted with problems, the most serious of which they ranked as high cost of labour. Also, correlation analysis revealed that there is no significant relationship between selected characteristics of the women farmers and their perception of the problems facing crop production. The study concluded that most of the selected characteristics were not significantly related to the perception of these women to constraints, owing to the small sizes of their farms. However, the study recommends that efforts should be made to encourage rural women farmers to form cooperatives so as to be able to secure farm input, especially machinery to reduce labour costs and overcome other financial constraints.