Soil Management Investment on Cassava Production in Oyo State, Nigeria

This study examines the soil management investment on cassava production in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo State (Nigeria) using cross-sectional data. Agriculture in Nigeria is a major branch of economy providing employment for majority of the population. The sector is being transformed by commercialized at the small, medium and large scale enterprise level. Data were collected with the use of a structured questionnaire from eighty eight (88) respondents; four villages were randomly selected for the study. The data collected were analysed using descriptive, mean and multiple regression analyses. The results showed that 84.1% of the farmers were male while 15.9% were female, 45.4% were between the ages of 21 and 30 years, 60.2% of the farmers had 1-10 years of farming experience while 33.0% had tertiary education. Fertilizer and manure applications were the major soil management practices used by the respondents; 44.3% of the farmers invested between N11,000 and N20,000 on soil management during the farming season. The regression analyses revealed that farm size and cassava output were positively significant ( = 0.203, p<0.10) and ( = 0.262, p<0.01)1 respectively while labour used was negatively signed and significant ( = -0.163, p<0.10) to the level of soil management investment. It was however, recommended that farmers should be more educated on the appropriate coping strategies for soil management. Hence, farmers should be encouraged by the Government by providing formal credit facilities with no or little interest rate to improve their soil management system in order to enhance productivity in the study area. It is recommended that farmers be assisted by the policy maker by the provision of agricultural credit and farm machineries at a subsidise rate which could solve the problem of labour intensity and enhance farmers productivity.