Since the attainment of political independence, successive governments have initiated various programmes aimed at accelerating food production and improving the welfare of the rural farmers in Nigeria. However; most of these efforts have not been successful in realizing their objectives. Some people are of the opinion that the neglect of the marketing component was in part responsible for these failures.
This study made use of a wide range of information, some from secondary source and mostly from primary sources by interviewing. Fadama farmers and marketers were interviewed.
Storage and processing of crops produced appear to be a problem. For the highly perishable crops such as tomatoes and sweet pepper, the most common form of processing is the sundrying method, albeit done unhygenically. Besides, most respondents agreed that the fresh vegetables bring them more
financial returns because the sun dried tomatoes and pepper have not gained total acceptability as the fresh ones.
Investigations further reveal that fadama produce especially tomatoes, pepper and onion have the bulk of their
consumption centres in the southern markets. The cost of transportation is usually enormous which therefore accounts
for the reduction in the margins that would have been accruing to fadama farmers. One other factor affecting the margin of
highly perishable fadama crops is poor and improper handling. This is because farmers and marketers pay little
attention to handling, processing and storage of fadama crops.
To prevent losses, the handling of these crops would need to be undertaken with caution.
The study identified two types of markets - rural and urban. The rural markets are located in villages and are held periodically while the urban markets operate on daily basis.
Five types of market intermediaries were observed in the study area; namely; rural selling agents, rural assemblers; rural retailers, urban wholesalers and urban retailers.
The distributive marketing margin figures indicated that middlemen received 32%, 38% and 46% of consumers expenditure on onions, tomatoes and sweet pepper respectively in Kano State. The gross marketing margin for the three crops in
Jigawa State are 36%, 48% and 19% respectively. Three hypotheses were tested. The first showed that in Kano State the mean prices at various markets were
signficantly (P<0.05) different for the three crops - onion, tomatoes and sweet pepper. In Jigawa State, it was observed
that the mean prices at various markets were significant. (P<0.05) different for onions and tomatoes, but prices were not significant for sweet pepper.
The second hypothesis showed that there was no significant (P>0.05) difference between the profits wholesalers and
retailers made in Kano State, but there was in Jigawa State.
The third hypothesis showed that there was enough evidence to show that traders in fadama crops would sell at lower than market price to allow them sell more and earn more profit in both Kano and Jigawa States.
The study identified six major marketing problems. They are transportation, storage, finance, packaging and grading,
education and marker information problems. Based on the marketing problems identified, the study made recommendations that could enhance the efficiency of the marketing system of fadama perishable crops. These are: improved transportation system; adeguate provision of storage facilities while the
sun-drying method is improved upon. The use of fibre board cartoons and moulded plastic containers for packaging should
be encouraged: government should also encourage private initiatives in agro-processing industries through incentives.
Information about prices of produce should be wide, disseminated by radio and T.V. and Government should fund more
research on agricultural marketing.
