ABSTRACT

The study examined the market participation and value chain of cassava farmers in Abia state, Nigeria. To realize this topic the following objectives were examined, the socioeconomic profile of farmers in the study al-ca; cassava output market options available to farm households; the net margin and the profitability of cassava root and garri marketing in the study area; the determinants of farmers participation in cassava value chain; major constraints to farmers' participation in cassava value chain across the state. Primary data used in the study were obtained from 135 cassava farmers selected through application of multistage randomized sampling technique. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, multinomial logit model and principal component model. The results of the field survey showed that the mean age of the cassava farmers was 44.19 years. 57.04% of cassava farmers were temales, 65.19% of the respondents were married, the mean household size was 5 persons with 46.67% having a household size of 4-6 persons, the mean level of education was 1 0.47 years with over 42.22% that attended secondary school, the mean years of experience was 1 0.90 years with 44.44% having between 7-i 1 years of experience, the mean farm size was 2.64 hectares with 69% of respondents having between 0.2-2.0 hectares of land, 54.07% of the respondents were nonmembers of the cooperative and 63.75 had access to market information. The result also showed that 42.92% of the farmers preferred to process their cassava to garri while the i'est processed to fufu, sold at the local market, farm gate and contract markets. The result of the net margin and profitability analysis of the cassava root and garri market showed net return on investment of unit 1.58 and unit 2.39 indicating that for every NI invested in cassava root marketing, 68 kobo was returned and for every Ni invested in gal'ri marketing NI .39 was returned respectively. The result of the multinomial logit model showed that marital status, level of education, distance to the market, farm size and transaction cost significantly influenced market participation in cassava root market while age, marital status, household size, level of education, distance to the market, market information, farm size, transaction cost and output significantly influenced participation in gal-ri market. The major constraints to farmers' participation in cassava value chain were high cost of' processing cassava, high transaction cost, poor coordination among actors in the value chain, lack of storage facilities, poor road network, price fluctuation, high cost of cassava tubers and poor access to market information. The study recommended that factors such as cassava product price, market information and cooperative membership should attract policy attention to boost cassava root and gal-ri market participation. Furthermore, impediments such as infrastructural environment should be addressed to enhance the performance of cassava value chain and participation in Abia state.