ABSTRACT

Nigerians are large consumers of fish which includes catfish with demand estimate of 1 .4metric tones. It was based on this background that the study was carried out to analyze the marketing of catfish in Ibadan with view of identifying the factors militating against catfish marketing, as the broad objective of the study. The specific objectives include to: examine the socio-economic characteristics of catfish marketers; examine the cost and returns of catfish in Ibadan; determine the factors that influence catfish marketing in Ibadan; identify problems associated with catfish marketing. However, the study hypothesizes that socio-economic characteristics such as age, marital status, sex, have no significant effect on catfish marketed in the study area. A combination of purposive and random sampling procedure were used to select the sample size of 109 respondents. Data were collected with the use of well structured questionnaire which was administered to the respondents. The study showed that sex was also significant at 1% and positively related to marketing of catfish. Price was also significant at 10% and negatively related to marketing of catfish. The results of the findings showed that the majority of the catfish sellers are females, married, have one form of education or the other that gave them the knowledge of what marketing is all about. Furthermore, it was found out that most of the distributors are processors followed by wholesalers and retailers. Based on this, the following recommendations were made. The government should address this problem by rehabilitating where possible, constructing new roads. This will make road transportation easier and go a long way to reduce the cost of transportation. The financial institutions should encourage the marketers of catfish by granting them loans with minimum interest rates. Also, the marketers should form a strong cooperative society so as to easy this problem of loan acquisition. There should be need to prohibit the use of insecticide or pesticide in the catfish production for this can be harmful to human health because of pollution. Provision of adequate storage facilities should be made to enable the catfish marketers to preserve the fish till the next market day to avoid spoilage.