Analysis of labour use pattern among yam farmers in Atisbo Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Labour plays a very crucial role in agricultural production. Its availability for agricultural production activities  remains worrisome as many capable hands have migrated to other production sector of the economy. The study  examined the labour use pattern among yam farmers in Atisbo local government area of Oyo State, Nigeria.  Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 120 farmers for the study. Structured questionnaire was used to  collect data from the respondents. Data were presented using descriptive (frequency and percentage) and inferential  (Chi square and Pearson and Product Moment Correlation) statistics at p =0.05. Mean age of the respondents was  52.8 years. Also, 72.5% of the respondents were male. The result on labour use pattern reveals that farmers use hired  labour mostly for land clearing (81.7%), ridge making (85.0%) and planting operation (60.8%) while family labour  is used for fertilizer application (61.7%) and weeding (37.5%). Hired and family labour (85% and 69.17%  respectively) were the major sources of labour in the area, 86.7% of the respondents claimed that hired labour is  always available while 40% claimed that family labour is always available. The major constraints to labour  availability were high cost (86.7%) and scarcity of labour (50.8%). There was a significant relationship between  religion (?2 = 0.000, P < 0.05) labour availability (?2 = 0.034, P > 0.05) and labour use pattern, however, there were  no significant relationship between the respondents’ socio economic characteristics like age (r = 0.083), size of  farmland (r = 0.296) and labour use pattern in the study area. The study concluded that hired and family labours  were found to be readily available in the area with hired labour been used for tedious activities such as land clearing,  ridges making, staking and harvesting in the study area, however, this was constrained by high cost and scarcity of
labour.