ABSTRACT

The study was conducted to assess farmer's participation in brown sugar processing in Makarfi, Soba and Kubau LGAs. A multistage sampling method was used. Data were collected from a total of 138 respondents using structured questionnaire and interview schedule. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics, logit regression, one sample t-test and t-test independent. The result showed that the age of the majority of the respondents fell between 31 and 50 years. Majority (75%) of the respondents were married. About (97%) of the respondents had one form of education of another. Logit Regression analysis showed that activity perform (1.01) and total income (0.00) were significantly related / influence to full- time participation at 1% level of significance while household size (1.20) and extension contact (0.06) were significantly related/ influence to full- time participation at 5% level of significance with a log likelihood of -30.76368, Pseudo R2 of 0.6498 and LR statistic of 114.15 which shows that the model has a good fit, Sex, age, marital status, level of education, primary occupation, access to credit, processing experience and cooperative association have positive coefficient, though not significant. One sample t- test reveals that differences existed between the mean income of brown sugar, molasses, bagasse and their total income. The mean income of brown sugar (N 39,615.66) was higher than that of bagasse (N12, 311.70) and molasses (N31, 303.42). Some of the constraints facing respondents in the study areas were insufficient capital to expand their businesses, lack of improve processing equipment, Lack of good roads network and Lack of marketing links were the major problems. It was recommended that government should make fund available to farmers inform of agricultural soft loan, make available improve processing machine at subsidize rate, farmers should form co-operative group (processors group) and more extension agents should be employed.