Assessment of Farm Outputs and Rural Income Generation of School-to-Land Agricultural Programme (STLAP) in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Earnings and farm outputs have remained the basis for assessing agricultural performance all over the world. Rivers State School-to-Land Agricultural Programme was initiated to improve the lives of rural dwellers. This study comparatively assessed the income and farm outputs of participating and non-participating farmers to School-to-Land Programme. A total of 84 samples were used for the analysis. A multi-stage proportionate stratified random sampling technique was adopted in selecting 73 participating farmers while cluster sampling technique was adopted in selecting 38 non-participating farmers. The major method used for data collection was the use of questionnaire and focus group discussion which included direct field observations. Descriptive statistics such as frequency count, percentages and mean were used for demographic characteristics while t-statistics tested at 0.05 per cent level of significance was used to establish that participating farmer’s performed better than non-participating farmers. It was recommended that government should supply inputs to farmers, involve farmers in agricultural policy decisions and provide financial facilities to cooperatives to enable members easily access soft revolving loans.

Key words: Rural Income, farm outputs, Agricultural Programme, Assessment