Rural Nonfarm Activities and Agricultural Crop Production in Nigeria

By Gbemisola Oseni, P. Winters. 2009

206 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although most rural households are involved in the farm sector, the nonfarm sector has grown significantly in recent decades, and its role in rural development has become increasingly important. This article examines the effect of participation in nonfarm activities on crop expenses of farm households in Nigeria. The relationship is modeled using a nonseparable agricultural household model that suggests that participating in nonfarm activities can relax the credit constraints facing farm households and reduce risk thereby helping households improve farm production and smooth consumption over time. The results show that participation in nonfarm activities by Nigerian farmers has a positive and significant effect on crop expenses and in particular on payments for hired labor and inorganic fertilizers. Separate analysis of the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria indicates that it is in the South-South and South-East zones where nonfarm participation appears to induce more hiring of labor. The results support the hypothesis that nonfarm participation helps relax liquidity constraints but suggests how that liquidity is used is zone-specific. In general, the results also indicate that liquidity is used more to pay for inputs into staple production as opposed to cash crops.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

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Citations in the corpus

Mobile Money, Agricultural Marketing, and Off-Farm Income in Uganda (2017, background): “In addition, off-farm earnings are sometimes used for investments in farming, especially in situations where rural financial markets fail (Oseni and Winters, 2009).”
Does Non-farm Income Affect Food Security? Evidence from India (2019, background): “Non-farm income could also ease liquidity constraints enabling greater farm investments which could smoothen consumption over time (Oseni & Winters, 2009).”
Impact of off-farm income on food security and nutrition in Nigeria (2010, background): “For instance, Kilic et al. (2009) found that rural households in Albania tend to use their off-farm earnings to move out of agriculture, whereas Oseni and Winters (2009) showed that offfarm activities in Nigeria help households to improve their farm production through higher input use, including…”
Does contract farming improve smallholder income? The case of avocado farmers in Kenya (2016, background): “…traits such as entrepreneurial ability, risk aversion, technical ability and social networking skills, which may be correlated with the outcome of interest, in this case income (Oseni and Winters, 2009; 7 The case of avocado farmers in Kenya Maertens, 2009; Barrett et al., 2012; Bellemare, 2012).”