Estimation of Costs and Returns in Homestead Garden Egg Production in Ezza North Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study estimated the cost and returns in homestead garden egg production in Ezza North Local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of the garden egg farmers, estimate the costs and returns and identify the basic problems faced by homestead garden egg farmers. A well-structured questionnaire was randomly administered to 90 garden egg farmers. The result showed that a good proportion (61.11%) were females within the age bracket of 31-50 and were of married category while fairly good proportion (50.00%) had household sizes of 4 to 6 persons while 75% of them were educated attaining various levels of education. Also, 41.11% had farm size of 0.1-0.5 indicating that the garden egg farmers engaged in small scale production as their major source of labour was both family and hired labour, 87.78% belonged to cooperative society or farmers’ association. The result further showed that majority of the respondents (91.00%) do not have access to extension contacts while 72.27% of the respondents do not have access to credit facilities which resulted to reduction in the production level of garden egg. The result further showed that garden egg production is profitable among rural household farmers in the study area since in every ₦1.00 spent, a farmer stands a chance of gaining ₦2.25 while the perceived constraints include; lack of storage facilities, inadequate finance, scarcity of improved planting materials among others. The findings recommended the following: Farmers should be encouraged to form or join cooperative societies in order to have access to improved inputs from government at reduced rates, Government should subsidize inputs like planting materials of good varieties and agro chemicals to poor rural farmers for improved production of garden egg among others.