ANALYSIS OF SUBSIDY UTILIZATION AND PRODUCTIVITY AMONG MAIZE FARMERS IN EKITI STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study analyses subsidy utilization and Productivity among maize farmers in Ekiti State. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select active 160 maize farmers using copies of well-structured questionnaires. Parametric tools such as Descriptive Statistics (DS) and Total Factor Productivity (TFP) model were used to analysis. The socioeconomic results reported that beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of subsidy had 75 years and 72.5years of average age; 75% and 72.5% males; 7years and 6years of years of farming experience and 62.5% and 50% of extension services among others respectively. TFP results comparatively revealed the summary for the beneficiary and non-beneficiary groups; mean (1.89 and 0.99), standard deviation (1.96 and 0.59), and the minimum value (0.39 and 0.22) respectively. The quantile results for the beneficiary and beneficiary categories revealed that Q₁ (25%=0.99 and 0.58), Q₂ (50%=1.52 and 0.91) and Q₃ (75%=2.30 and 1.35) and the maximum of 17.09 and 3.56 respectively; revealing that the beneficiaries of subsidy among the maize farmers performed better productively than their non-beneficiary counterparts. The TFP result for the efficiency range indicated that in the high category of performance evaluation, the beneficiaries of subsidy among the maize farmers performed better. It was concluded that subsidy aids the performances of the maize farmers through price reduction that enhanced efficient resource allocation, and in turn, better performance. It was recommended that stakeholders in agriculture should make a vigorous effort towards creating subsidy awareness and make it accessible to all the maize farmers in the study area.