ABSTRACT

This study examined the economics of sweet potato production in Oguta local government area cjf'Inio state Nigeria. The study was conducted within the framework of rural farming households who constitute the backbone of the Nigerian agricultural sector, producing about 80% per cent of the total national agricultural output with the cutlass-hoe technology and under rainfed condition. Socioeconornics, profitability, allocative efficiency of resource use in sweet potato, production function were analysed using data from 80 producers. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. Majority of the respondents were male farmers while others were female. Many of the farmers were within the age range of 41-50years while the rest about 21-25% were between 51-60years.Most of the respondents were married while the rest were single about 98.75% and 1.26% respectively. Farm size, capital inputs and fertilizer were positively significant at l%,5% and 10% level of probability. Cost and returns analysis indicate that labour constituted about 67.56% of total variable cost of production which implies that production of sweet potato is labour intensive because most operations were carried out manually. Inputs such as farm-size, labour. planting materials, were under-utilized while capital was over utilized. Female should engage themselve3 in the production of sweet potato as women are responsible for the bulk of processed root crops in Nigeria.