Socio-economic Characteristics and Returns of Dates Palm Marketing in Gombe Metropolis, Gombe State, Nigeria: agricultural policies, resource economics and agribusiness.

Abstract

The study examined the socio-economic characteristics and returns of date palm marketing in Gombe metropolitan markets. Questionnaires were distributed to fourty respondents randomly selected. Data were collected from ten respondents in each of the market location. Descriptive statistic and marketing margin was used to analyse the data. The results shows that 37.5% of the respondents were young within the age of 21-30, those with Quar’anic educational qualification constituted 45% of the total respondents, marketers who were married constituted 75% while those with household size ranging from 6-10 had the highest percentage of 40. Mean while, years of marketing experience for those ranging from 1-5 had the highest percentage of 62.5 and the marketing margin of 20% was realised from both small tin (0.11kg) and big tin (0.22kg). The major constraint among others faced by the marketers was pest and insect attacked with 62.3%. It was therefore recommended that appropriate means of products preservation should be introduced in dates palm marketing.

Keywords: Socio-economic, Characteristics, Dates palm, Returns, Marketers