Determinants of Gender Productivity among Smallholder Cowpea Farmers in Baga, Kukawa Local Government of Borno State

Article No.: 072313746 DOI: 10.15580/GJAS.2013.9.072313746 This study was carried out to investigate the determinants of gender productivity among smallholder cowpea farmers in Baga, Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State, Nigeria. A random sample of 70 respondents comprising 35 male and 35 female cowpea farmers were the source of data for the study. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were used for the data analysis. The results showed that most respondents were smallholders with about 80% and 86% of male and female respondents respectively having less than 5 ha of farm land. About 74.3% of the male and 71.4% of the female were above the age of 40 years while 74.3% of the male and 82.9% of the female respondents were educated to various levels of schooling. Mean input per hectare used by men exceeded the input used by women and the average output per hectare of the men (1220Kg) exceeded that of the women (1050Kg). Farm size, seed and labor were significant determinants of cowpea production among both men and women respondents. It was recommended that women in the area be given more access to production inputs through grants or loans in cash and kind to help them improve their cowpea production output. Submitted: 23/07/2013 Accepted: 22/09/2013 Published: 29/09/2013


INTRODUCTION
Cowpea is the most important food legume grown in the tropical savanna zone of Africa.Although it is indigenous to South Eastern Africa, cowpea has spread worldwide and is extensively cultivated and consumed in regions of Asia, South and Central America, The Caribbean, United States, Middle East and Southern Europe.Nigeria is the highest producer of cowpea in the world, producing about 56% of the world's production.It is also the largest consumer of cowpea in the world (FAO, 2004).
Much of the food in Nigeria is produced by small scale rural farmers (Ozowa, 1997).Men are considered the traditional bread winners among households (Springer, 2010).This not withstanding, women play key roles in the bread winning of their families.They are important sources of food for their families (Ibnouf, 2009) so much so that women produce about 60 -80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world's food production (www.fao)although their contributions are often hidden and attributed to men.Gender in agriculture focuses on the relationship between men and women with regard to their roles, access to and control of resources, division of labor and needs.In agricultural production, women have been found to be more constrained in accessing production resources than their male counterparts.This has often been reflected in women having less access to information, technology, inputs and credit resulting in women having more depressed productivity than men (Shultz, 1988).
Given the already large and growing contribution that women farmers are making to agricultural production in general, and to feeding their households in particular, it is necessary to investigate the determinants of men and women's agricultural productivity in order to understand their peculiar limitations in production.The findings are necessary to provide information requied to make relevant policy recommendations for each group to encourage their optimum production, given the current technology.The objective of this paper is to investigate the determinants of cowpea production among male and female cowpea farmers in Baga, Kukawa L. G. A. of Borno State, Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY
Baga is situated in Kukawa Local Government Area of Borno State.Its geographical coordinates are 13 0 5′ 39′′ North, 13 0 49′ 19′′ East.Baga people have lived in their current location since the 14 th century.Baga lies within the Sahel region of the country's vegetation with mean annual rainfall of 500mm and the mean temperature of the area is 34 0 C. Seven (7) wards were purposely selected.These wards were selected on the basis of their high cowpea production.10 respondents, five male and five female were selected from each ward using convenience sampling thus, giving a sample size of 70 respondents comprising 35 male and 35 female cowpea farmers.
Descriptive statistics and regression techniques were used to analyze the data.The descriptive statistics used include percentages and frequency distribution.Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the production function for cowpea.Double log Production function was used to determine the determinants of gender productivity among farmers in the study area.The explicit form of the production function is as follows:

Efficiency of Resource Use
The marginal value product (MVP) of each resource used was estimated by using regression coefficients.This method was used by Amaza and Anumah (2003), Goni et al. (2007) and Oniah et al. (2008).

Socioeconomic Characteristics of Respondents
The socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents were examined with regard to age, marital status, family size, educational level and farming experience.The analysis of respondents' responses in Table 1 indicates that 74.3% of the male and 71.4% of the female were above the age of 40 years.This is an indication that cowpea, being a cash crop in the study area, was cultivated by older farmers probably because older farmers were more experienced and financially stable to handle cowpea production.The women were however younger than the men.Furthermore, 74.3% of the male and 82.9% of the female respondents were educated to various levels of schooling implying that female cowpea farmers in the study area were more likely to adopt improved technologies when compared to their male counterparts.
Household size affects output, in that the higher the household size, the more the labor available for production resulting in an increase in output.About 56% of the male respondents had household size above seven persons while female respondents had 50% of household size above seven persons.This indicates that male respondents had more family labor available to them than female respondents, giving the male respondents an edge in production over the female respondents.Source: Field survey data, 2010 Male cowpea farmers engaged in mixed cropping system were 60% while 40% engaged in sole cropping system while 54% of female respondents in sole cropping, the remaining 48% engaged in mixed cropping system.Mixed cropping is usually engaged in to reduce the risk of losses.The result shows that women were more committed to cowpea business than men.The male respondents who had higher percentage of mixed croppers could be said to be more risk averse than female respondents.Majority of the male respondents (63%) had over 10 years farming experience while fewer female respondents (46%) had over 10 years of farming experience.The male respondents had longer years of farming experience than women probably because men were usually more aware and involved with cash crop than women and cowpea is a cash crop in the study area.Farm size analysis of respondents showed that about 80% and 86% of male and female respondents respectively had less than 5 ha of farm land indicating that majority of the cowpea farmers were small scale farmers as is commonly the case in developing countries.Male respondents had larger farm sizes than the female respondents and committed more land to cowpea production than the female respondents.This finding coupled with higher farming experience of male respondents could result in higher cowpea output for male respondents.The analysis of non-farm income of the respondents indicates that fewer female respondents (about 80%) had annual non-farm income of below N300, 000 compared to the male respondents (about 88%) implying that the women earned more non farm income than the men.This may be as a result of women having more time for non farm businesses because of less work on the farm since women tend to farm smaller plots than the men.The analysis of farm income from last cropping season on the other hand showed that fewer male respondents (74.3%) had farm income below N300, 000 than the female respondents (83%).This may be as a result of the male respondents having more access to some production resources like land and family labor (see Table 1).About 37% of he female respondents owned their own land acquired through inheritance and purchase while above 54% of male respondents were the owners of their farm lands.On the other hand, while 62.8% of the female respondents used family land for cowpea production, only 46% of the men needed to fall back on family land for agricultural production.This finding gives an indication that men in the study area had more access to personal production land than women.The implication is that women will have a less tenure security than men resulting in lower motivation and farm management skills among the women which may hamper production efficiency.Socioeconomic characteristics of male and female farmers have also been compared by Adeleke et al. (2008) who made similar observations with the findings of this study.

Inputs and Output of Male and Female Cowpea Farmers
The input and output for both male and female farmers were computed to know the mean value of inputs used and output gained.

Table 2: The inputs and output of male and female cowpea farmers
Source: Field Survey Data, 2010 The result in Table 2 shows the mean quantities of inputs used for cowpea production among male and female respondents.The male respondents from the specified inputs obtained an average yield of 1230kg/ha while the female respondents had an average yield of 1050kg/ha.The higher quantity of inputs among the men compared to that of the women resulted in higher output for men compared to the women and not necessarily because of greater efficiency of male farmers compared to the female.This implies that with more access to inputs, the women were likely to produce as much output as men.This is similar to the finding of Ogundele (2004).

The production function analysis
The production function analysis was used to examine the determinants of cowpea production among male and female cowpea farmers.It was also used to estimate the resource use efficiency of the respondents.Table 3 shows that about 73% of variation in cowpea production was explained by the specific variable inputs as indicated by the R 2 of 0.73 for male cowpea farmers while 71% of variation in women's yield of cowpea was explained by specific factor inputs, as indicated by the R 2 of 0.71 among female cowpea farmers.

Male
The coefficients of farm size, seed and labor were significant determinants of production.They were Significant at 1% for farm size and labor and 5% for seeds among male respondents.The variables farm size; seed and labor were significant at 1% among women meaning that farm size is a significant determinant of cowpea production in the study area.It also means that output increases as farm size increases.
The coefficient of quantity of cowpea seed (x2) is positive as expected for both male and female cowpea farmers.It is also statistically significant at 5% and 1% for both farmers respectively meaning that the more quantity of cowpea seed used, the more output obtainable.The coefficient of labor used (x3) was positive and statistically significant at 1% for both cowpea farmers, indicating that increase in labor will increase yield.Fertilizer (x4), pesticide (x5) and herbicide (x6) were found to be negative for both sets of cowpea farmers, meaning that reducing the use of these variables will increase yield.The variables were however statistically insignificant at the specified levels.The use of fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides by farmers is probably as a result of having inadequate extension contact as is usually the case among rural farmers in Nigeria.Okoye et al. (2008) in a similar study found all variables except planting materials significant for women cocoyam farmers while men farmers had positive but insignificant coefficient for fertilizer.

CONCLUSION
Among the respondent farmers in the study area, male cowpea farmers were more experienced farmers but less educated than the female farmers.The study also revealed that farm size, seeds and labor were the determinants of cowpea production among male and female farmers.The male cowpea farmers were found to have more access to resources of production than the female farmers resulting in higher yields for the male farmers than that of the female farmers.Extension services are necessary to help farmers manage their farms more efficiently.It is recommended that women in the area be given increased access to production inputs through grants or loans in cash and kind to help them improve their cowpea production output.
The marginal value product (MVP) was compared with the marginal factor cost of one unit of particular resource.The following ratios were then estimated to determine of output MFC = Unit cost of particular input used If r = 1, resource is optimally utilized r > 1, resource is under utilized r < 1 i.e. resource is over utilized