Determining rural farmers income: A rural Nigeria experience

This paper describes the earning activities of farmers in Afon district, a rural area in Kwara State, Nigeria with a view to assess factors determining rural farmers’ income. 268 farmers were interviewed through questionnaire administration, and the results show that a large number of rural farmers depend on family labour, local inputs and personal instincts to earn productive incomes. The farmers’ income in this study is used as a major tool for the isolation of basic factors that ought to be accorded priority in subsequent rural development policy. The findings also show that through the use of stepwise multiple regressions, four factors were found to be the main determinants of a farmer’s income out of the twelve examined. These are x3(farm output/yield per ton), x4(cost of farm input and implements), x11(accessibility to credit facilities), and x8(transport cost). In all twelve cases examined four variables together account for about 84.09 % of the total variance in income of farmers within a given year. Appropriate policy recommendations are provided to improve farmers’ income nation wide.   Key words: Income, rural, development, facilities, operators, small-scale, food-baskets.