Journal of Environmental and Agricultural Sciences (JEAS). Gani et al., 2020. Volume 22(1): 17-22
Open Access – Research Article
Economics of Sweet Potato Marketing in Zing Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria
B.S. Gani 1, D.T. Rukwe 2,* , Y.J. Elizabeth 2
1 Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Taraba State University, Jalingo, Nigeria
2 National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria
Abstract: This study was conducted on economics of sweet potato marketing in Zing Local Government Area, Taraba State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to: identify the socio economic characteristics of sweet potato marketers in the study area, estimate the marketing margin and marketing efficiency of sweet potato marketing in the study area and identify the constraints faced by the traders in marketing the crop. Data for this study were collected using structured questionnaire. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select respondents for the study. The data collected were analysed using descriptive and gross margin analysis. The socio-economic characteristics result showed that about 77.6% of the sweet potato marketers were male, 91.8% of the respondents were young people whose ages ranged between 28 to 57 years with 63.3% married marketers. The result revealed that 83.7% of the sweet potato marketers had formal education, 83.7% marketers did not belong to any cooperative organization, 79.59 % of marketers had no access to credit to finance their sweet potato marketing activities and 42.9% had 6-10 years’ experience in sweet potato trading. The result shows that the gross marketing margin and net marketing margin were ₦6921.28 and ₦6571.28 respectively with marketing efficiency of 0.59 kobo. The result reveals that, inadequate capital, low profit, inadequate and poor storage facilities, price fluctuation and lack of standard measures were some of the problems identified as problems militating against Sweet Potato marketing in the study area. Sweet potato marketing is a profitable business with attractive net return and investment in Zing LGA of Taraba State. It was recommended that government as well as non-governmental agencies should empower the marketers through the provision of micro credit facilities and modern storage facilities to encourage more people to go into sweet potato marketing.
Keywords: Crop, agricultural marketing, market integration, marketers, Africa, developing countries.
*Corresponding author: D.T. Rukwe, rukwedaniel@gmail.com
Cite this article as: Gani, B.S., D.T. Rukwe and Y.J. Elizabeth. 2020. Economics of sweet potato marketing in Zing local government area of Taraba state, Nigeria. Journal of Environmental & Agricultural Sciences. 22(1):17-22.
Copyright © Gani et al., 2020. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original author and source are appropriately cited and credited.