ABSTRACT
The study examined the effects of Delta State Microcredit Scheme (DMCP) on crop production in Delta State. The study was specifically designed to: describe the socio economic characteristics of the respondent farmers, determine loan volume accessed by farmers under the DMCP scheme, determine the structure of costs and returns in the farm production activities of the respondents, compare the income of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries before and after obtaining DMCP credit and examine the factors affecting farmers output under the scheme. Structured questionnaires were administered to 120 respondents who were drawn through multistage sampling techniques. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as percentage, mean, frequency, standard deviation, cost and return analysis, multiple regression model and double difference estimator were used to analyze the data. At the end of the analysis, it was observed that 56.7% of the respondents were male. The mean age of the respondent was 49 years, 61.7% were married, 77.5% were literate. The respondents had 12 years farming experience. The average family size was 7 persons. The average annual income after DMCP was N 173700.00. The result showed that the net farm income (NFI) earned by beneficiaries (N 17,277,302) was higher than those of the non-beneficiaries (N9, 144,945). The exponential model of the multiple regression analysis used showed that farming experience, farm size, access to loan, fixed input cost, cost of planting materials, volume of loan granted and membership of co-operative were significant at 1% and 10% level of probability. The student t-test result showed that there was a significant difference between income of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries before and after obtaining DMCP credit. The result was significant at the 95% confidence level. Based on the result of the Double-Difference Estimation, the increase in income of beneficiaries was attributed to their participation in DMCP. This implies that the credit from DMCP had impact on beneficiaries’ production activities. It is recommended that more efforts should be made by government at all levels to create more credit institutions to encourage adequate accessibility of credit by all farmers. |
