Determinants of Poverty Coping Strategies among Women Farmers in Yola South Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the determinants of poverty coping strategies among women farmers in Yola-South Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria. A purposive and random sampling technique was employed to select 140 women for the study. Data were collected through the use of structured questionnaire. Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that 87.9% of the respondents were within the ages of 20-40 years, educated 89.3% and married 81.4% with household sizes of less than 10 persons (82.2%). Most of the respondents (66.4%) had above 11 years of farming experience. Selling of farm waste, farming, on farm crop processing and fish farming were the poverty coping strategies commonly adopted by the respondents in the study area. The coefficient of determination (R2) was estimated at 0.554 and this indicated that  55.4% of variation of the dependent variable in the model were explained by explanatory variables (age, marital status, household size, level of education, farm size, farming experience, membership of women groups and extension contact). The t-values of the significant variables namely; level of education (X4), farm size (X5), farming experience (X6) and membership of women group (X7) are 6.306529, 2.947541, 2.747442 and 6.030350 respectively. These were all significant at 1% probability level. Among the constraints faced by the respondents include: lack of access to market 27.3%, Women access to fund 24.2%, and poor and crude storage / processing equipment 21.5% and type of crop grown 10.8% were foremost among the constraints. It is recommended that government and other NGOs should come up with policy framework that is targeted at reducing or obliterating the bureaucratic principles that create barriers to women access to bank credit or any source is germane.