Effects of Micro Credit on Productivity of Small Scale Poultry Farmers in Kaduna Central Agricultural Zone, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of micro credit on the productivity of small scale poultry production in the central Agricultural zone of Kaduna state Nigeria.  This study adopts public opinion survey making use of Primary data with the aid of structured questionnaire from small scale commercial poultry farmers in four selected local Governments.           The items were both open and closed ended questions, the purpose of which was to give freely and direction to the responses. The study involved both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The result of the analysis reveals that the average revenue from sales of the output of users of micro credit was found to be higher than that of non-users. It also reveals that input variables of value of feeds and water were significant at 1%. The study also reveals that the inefficiency model shows five out of eight variables were statistically significant in production. The result also indicated that the mean technical efficiency estimates of poultry farmers in the study area is 89%. This study could not cover the entire Local Government Areas of the state where poultry production is prevalent; also, it could not assess the impact of such loan on the livelihood of the farmers through the production because of data limitation. Policy thrust needs to have more rural outlets with well-designed prudent loan utilization training to go along with loan disbursement. This study provides an analysis of the effect of micro credit on the productivity of small scale poultry farmers in central Agricultural zone, a major poultry production region in Kaduna state Nigeria.

Keywords: Poultry productivity, Kaduna Central Agricultural zone, Small scale poultry farmers, Micro Credit.