Gender Analysis of Determinants of Labor Input among Yam Farmers in Paiko Local Government Area of Niger State , Nigeria

The study examined factors that determined labor input of male and female managed farms among yam producing households in Paiko Local government area of Niger State. Primary data were used and a structured questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 60 households from where 60 respondents (30 male and 30 female) were obtained. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data collected. The findings of the study revealed that 76.63% of the male respondents were aged 20-40 years, while 78.3% of the female were aged 20-40 years. Determinants of labor supply among the female managed farms had R 2 of 49% with family size, farm size and yam farming experience being statistically significant while among male managed farms, R 2 was 90.3% and farm size, age, wage rate, number of extension visits and family size were statistically significant. The major constraints to yam farming among the male yam farmers were lack of transportation and disease. On the other hand, the major constraints faced by the female farmers were time spent in household chores and transportation. It was recommended that Government should design policies that will help yam farmers to easily access loans at low interest. In order to ensure that the labor imputed into yam production is not wasted, farming inducement packages should be instituted. Such packages to be targeted at farmers include access to extension services and membership of cooperatives.


INTRODUCTION
Yam (Dioscorea spp) is a perennial herbaceous vine cultivated for human consumption.The vegetable has a rough skin which is difficult to peel but softens after heating.The skin varies in color from dark brown to light pink.The majority of the vegetable is composed of a much softer substance known as "meat".This substance ranges in color from white or yellow to purple or pink in nature.Yam tubers can grow up to 1.5meters in length and weight up to 7kg (FAO 2008).Nigeria is the largest yam producer in the world with about thirty five million metric tones produced annually (FAO 2008).There are many cultivars of yam.Yam is a versatile vegetable.It can be barbecued, roasted, fried, grilled, boiled, baked, smoked, and when grated it is processed into a desert recipe.Yam is an agriculturally and culturally important commodity in West Africa where over 90% of the world yam crop is harvested (Source).
One of the greatest challenges to agricultural production in Nigeria is how to ensure increased food production and value addition of agricultural products through processing and marketing.Women make significant contributions to the food production and processing of food stuff (Rahman et al;2004).They provide some 60-80% of agricultural labour and are responsible for 80% of food production (Ingawa, 1999;Mgbada, 2002;Rahman et al;2004).Food and Agriculture Organization (1998) observed that women produced between 60-80% of the food in most of Sub-Saharan African countries and are responsible for half of the world's food production.Women produce and process food and use diverse coping strategies for ensuring food security for their households (Rahman, 2009).
Women have been battling with various socioeconomic obstacles which affect their productivity in agricultural sector.Even though it has been recognized that they play a major role in food production and processing, women have more difficulties in gaining access to resources such as land, labor, credit and productivity-enhancing inputs and services than men (Rahman, 2009).A study of farm households in Nasarawa State, revealed that every one hour spent by a man on farm works produced more extra output compared to the case of women due to the fact that men have more access to productive resources compared to the women (Rahman, 2009).Rahman et al., (2004) also reported that women carry the major responsibility for both farm production and domestic work which negatively affects their labor productivity in farm production.
www.gjournals.org650 Agriculture uses combination of male and female household labor and hired labor.Hired labor in many areas of the world is solely composed of men, while most of the fami1y labor in agriculture is often offered by women and children (Shaw, 2004).Farm operations that required a lot of energy such as land clearing and land preparation are predominantly carried out by men, while women predominantly carry out relatively lighter operations in the farm which include; processing, harvesting and storage (Audu, 2009).
The productivity of men tends to be higher than that of the women.The total productivity of men in Nigeria ranges from 65-80%, while that of women is 20-45% (Audu, 2009).The lower productivity of women is due to poor access to farm inputs among which is labor.The average production per farm tends to be lower in countries where women represent the larger share of agricultural labor force than men (Udry, 1995).This was also the observation in Lavun LGA of Niger State where women's productivity was 35% while that of men was 65% (Tsado, 2009).The objective of this study was to carry out a gender analysis of factors determining labor contribution to yam production in Paiko Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY
The study was carried out in Paiko Local Government Area (LGA) of Niger State, It lies between latitude 9 ° 36' and 9° 4' North and longitude 6° 36' and 7° 2'East which is situated in agricultural zone one of Niger State.The total area is 2,066km 2 .The inhabitants are predominantly Gwari.Other tribes are Nupe, Hausa and Fulani.The study population consists mainly of farmers.
Purposive sampling was used to select yam farming households in the study area, after which simple random sampling technique was used to select 30 male respondents and 30 female respondents making a total of 60 respondents from the study area.
Descriptive statistics which include frequency distribution and percentages were used to analyze data on socioeconomic characteristics of respondents and problems of farm labor access amongst respondents.Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the factors that affected farm labor access of respondents.This method was adapted from the study of Anim ( 2011) who carried out a similar study in South Africa.

Socio-economic Characteristics of Yam Farmers
The socio-economic characteristics studied included age, educational background, years of experience in yam farming, household size, primary occupation, marital status, goal of production, distance of the farm from home, number of extension visits and sources of fund.Table 1 shows the socio-economic characteristics of male and female yam farmers.
Majority (76.66%) of the male respondents were 40years and below, while 23.34% were 41 years and above.On the other hand, 83.3% of the female respondents were aged 40years and below while only 16.7% were 41 years and above.This indicates that most of the respondents are in their productive age with the women being generally younger than the men.This is similar to the findings of Umoru ( 2011) in a study on gender analysis of fish farmers in MMC, Borno State, Nigeria.Table 1 also showed that most of the male respondents (56.7%) were illiterates with no formal education.Majority of the female respondents (66.7%) were illiterates while 33.3% of the respondents were literate.The result shows that there were more literate men than women in www.gjournals.org651 the study.This was probably because the girl child was usually denied access to education compared to the male child.There is however a generally low literacy level among men and women.Low levels of education reduce managerial efficiency and decision making powers among farmers.Majority of the male respondents (73.4%) had 7-18 years experience in yam farming while 26.7% had 19-30 years experience in yam farming.Most of the female respondents (93.4%) however, had 7-18years experience in farming while only 6.6% had 19-30 years experience in yam farming.This is probably because yam being a cash crop was more a male crop until recently when women began to get involved.The men, being more literate and more experienced in yam production will probably manage farm labor better than the women.
Most of the male respondents (over 65%) had household sizes of above nine persons, while over 73% of the female respondents had household sizes below 10 people.These results suggest that men had larger household sizes compared to women.This may be because most of the men practiced polygamy, sometimes for the purpose of acquiring family labor to work on their farms.This implied that men have more access to family labor than women, thus were likely to be more farm labor secure than women.Primary occupation of most of the male respondents (50%) was farming, civil service (20%) and trading (30%).The Primary occupation of most of the female respondents (56.7%) was farming, civil service (3.3%) and trading (40%).Men were more into civil service than the women probably because men were more educated than the women.This also indicates that majority of the respondents' primary occupation was farming.This means that farm labor will be very important to the respondents.
Majority of the male respondents interviewed were married (83.3%), 10% were widowed and 10% were divorced.Majority of the female respondents interviewed (60%) were married while 23.3% were widowed and 16.7% were divorced.This indicated that most of the yam farmers in the study area had families to cater for, thus implying that farm labor will be required even if only for subsistent production.Some of the male respondents (40%) were into yam farming for commercial and subsistence purposes, 33.3% for commerce purpose only and 26.7% for subsistence production only.On the other hand, 76.6% of respondent females had both commercial and subsistent production goals.About 13% had commercial goals while 10% produced for subsistence only.This implies that there were more men than women that had profit maximization goals which is normally the case in enterprises involved in by men and women.There were however more women than men whose only motive in producing yams was for subsistence.This is to be expected because women often spend more of their income on household welfare.The rest of the respondents had both commercial and subsistence goals.This comprised the majority of male and female respondents implying that most of the respondents produced yam both as a source of income and household food.
Majority of the male respondents (66.7%) had their farms 1-2.5km away from home, while 33.3% had their farms 3-4km away from home.Majority of the female respondents (83.3%) had their farms 1-2.5km away from home, while (16.7%) had their farms 3-4km far away from home.This result indicated that the male respondents had their farms a bit farther away from their homes compared to the female respondents.More male respondents had more distant farms than the female farmers.This is probably because women as mothers needed to have farms close to their homes to enhance their domestic responsibilities.Most of the male respondents (43.3%) had 1-2 extension visits annually while (36.7%) of the male respondents had 3-4 and (20%) had 5 and above extension visits.Most of the female respondents (83.3%) had 1-2 extension visits while 10% of the female respondents had 3-4 extension visits and 6.7% had four extension visits annually.This result indicated that men had access to extension visits more than the women, which means extension visits are directed toward male farmers and majority of the female respondents did not have much access to extension visits because extension agents usually found it difficult to visit the farmers because of social, cultural and religious norms.This has a negative effect on women's managerial and decision making capacities.Majority of the male respondents (63%) had access to fund from their families and friends while majority of the female respondents (67%) got access to funds from their families and money lenders.This result indicated that male farmers accessed agricultural funds more cheaply than women who patronized money lenders more than men.Money lenders are known to charge very high rates on funds.This situation is likely to reduce women's access to farm hired labor.

Determinants of labor use in male and female managed yam farms
The regression analysis showing the relationship between the specified explanatory variables and use of farm labor in male and female managed yam farms showed that among the male farms, R 2 was 90.3% and 49.6% among female managed farms.This implies that the specified equation described the determinants of male farm labor use more than those of female farms.Among male farm managers, labor use was determined by family size, yam farming experience and number of extension visits which were positively signed and significant at 1% level.Farm size, age and wage rate also had positive signs and were significant at 5% level.Among the female farm managers, family size, farming experience and farm size was significant.This implies that the larger the farm size in both male and female managed farms, the higher the labor inputs that will be required to farm the land.Farming experience was significant at 1 % for male respondents and 5% level among the female, indicating that the longer the years involved in farming, the more the labor input used by farmers, this being more so among the male than female.This could be because as a farmer grows in experience over time ; household www.gjournals.org652 members also grow in farm labor capacity, resulting in increased availability of family labor.Increase in family size was shown to increase labor use in both male and female farms.The larger the family size, the larger the number of people available to supply farm labor.Age, wage rate and number of extension visits were positive and significant for the male respondents.This meant that as these variables increased, the level of labor input used in the male managed farms increased.This could be because as men grew older, their family sizes grew, especially in polygamous households.As the children became old enough to work on the farm, they increased labor input use.Labor supply increased as wage rate increased.This is especially so in the farming season when demand for labor increased.Since the men had cheaper access to finance, they seemed more capable of affording hired labor than the women managers.The more the contact with extension services, the more likely it was for farmers to adopt new technology.New technology adoption could result in the need for more labor use.This finding is similar, to the findings of Okoye (2011) where it was found that the number of extension visits and wage rate were significant in the male managed farms in that study.The study of Anim (2011) in South Africa showed all the variables to be significant at different levels.

Problems of yam farming
Table 3 shows the problems affecting yam farmers in the study area.The major constraints to the male farmers according to the order of ranking were transportation, pest and disease, storage and inadequate credit (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th) among male managed farms.
The major constraints of the female managers according to the order of ranking were; time spent on household chores, pest and disease, transportation and inadequate credit (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th).The result indicated that both male and female yam farms reported similar problems except that time spent on household chores other than farming was the most limiting problem among female managers, while transportation was male managers greatest problem.Transportation was considered a problem because yam is heavy, bulky and fragile (can easily break) so transporting it can be difficult and costly.It is often transported manually using head pans and calabashes.Difficulty in transporting yam output to market could result in low income and losses resulting from breakages and spoilage.Pest and disease are also constraints to the yam farmers, both on the field and when in storage.Those attacked by pest and disease result in losses reflected by fall in the price of the yam due to reduction in quality.Even home consumption may suffer as a result of losses from pests and diseases.The male respondents considered storage as a major problem.Because of its bulk and perishability, yam requires special space for storage and this is not always available to farmers.The result is that most farmers sell their produce at low prices shortly after harvest.Both male and female respondents considered inadequate access to credit a major constraint.This is so because credit is important to enhance access to inputs and marketing costs like storage and transportation.Time spent on household chores was a minor problem to male respondents, who were not responsible for household chores.According to the gender roles in the study area, household chores like cooking and child care were women's work.It constrains the labour input of female farm managers due to limitations in time spent in laboring in the farm.
These problems tend to limit the size of land cultivated, as the more the farm size and subsequent harvest, the more the problems.The problem of inadequate credit results in problem of accessing inputs like fertilizer, herbicide, insecticides, seed yams, and staking materials.Asinobi et al (2005) worked on cassavaand Okoye et al (2008a) worked on cocoyam and also observed similar constraints among men and women farmers.

CONCLUSION
The findings of the study revealed that yam farming was the primary occupation in the study which greatly contributes to the livelihood of both male and female farm managers.Women were disadvantaged in the production of yam which though a staple food in the area, was predominantly a male crop.Production in female farms was more for household consumption than that of male farms.Labor use in women farms was determined by household size, farm size and farming experience while that of male farms was determined by the same variables as women farms, as well as number of extension visits, age and labor wage rate.Male and female farms faced problems that limited labor use.Women's labor use was among others limited by the time spent on household chores.Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that credit should be made more available to farmers to assist them access labor more easily.Problems of transportation, storage, pest and diseases can be ameliorated by forming farmer cooperatives and accessing extension services.This is important so as to avoid the losses that will result in waste of farm labour.

Table 1 : Socio-economic Characteristics of Male and Female Yam Farmers
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