ABSTRACT

The broad objective of this work was to examine the economics of snail production in Owerri of Imo State of Nigeria. From a sample of 47 snail farmers drawn from Owerri, input — output • level, profitability and factors affecting output of snail production in the study area, and also the socio-economic factors associated with snail production were investigated. The age class of 36- 45 accounted for the highest percentage of farmers in the study area. The sex distribution analysis revealed that the females dominated the production of snail with a percentage of 5.3. The household size bracket of 1-5 has the highest number of farmers falling into t T1e education attainment analysis revealed that all of the farmers had formal education will them attaining up to tertiary education. Years of fanning experience analysis showe4 that between 1-5 years accounted for the highest number of farmers with about 76.6%. The analysis of the sources of foundation stock revealed that the major source of foundation stock of the farmers is from farms and markets.. The marital status of the farmers revealed that 45 out of 47 farmers interviewed are married while the remaining 2 are single. However the married ones include both widowed and those divorced. The total average fixed cost item was N15, 546.64 and the total average variable cost was N7, 094.8 while the average total revenue was N34, 693.88. This gave a net return of Ni 2,056.4.. The semi-log functional form was chosen as the lead equation. The choice was informed by the value of its adjusted R2, the relative magnitude of R2, which is 58.i% Also the choice of this functional form was informed by its F-ratio as well as the fact that the functional form has a high number of significant input coefficients. The R2 of 0.581 implies that 58.1% variation in the. gross income of the snail farmers is caused by the variation in the inputs that it was regressed with. The productivity of all the resources namely foundation stock, working capital and cost of housing were positive. This indicates that revenue can be increased by raising levels of these resources. The recommendations such as the need for farmers to increase the use of land, labour, capital input, etc was proffered. Also the need for the farmers to form cooperative was also suggested.