A case study of Income of Cocoa farmers and educational achievement of their children in Akure South west local government, Ondo state southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Any lucrative occupation must be able to bring job satisfaction, cater for the basic needs of life of the worker and increase his standard of living beyond poverty line. Cocoa farming is assumed to be a lucrative occupation in south western Nigeria. Hence, A field survey was carried out to assess the Income of Cocoa farmers and educational achievement of their children in Akure South west local government, Ondo state, southwestern Nigeria. A three stage random sampling technique was used to select cocoa farmers for the study. The first stage was a purposive selection of the study area. The second stage was a random selection of six villages each from the local government area making a total number of one hundred and twenty farmers. The third and final stage was a random selection of 20 farmers from each of the selected villages. More male (80%) participated in growing cocoa than the female (20%). The age of farmers who engaged in cocoa production were 50 years and above with no or minimal educational qualification (no formal education 25% and primary six 45%). Average of the respondents cultivate less than one hectare of land (50%). The result showed that the higher the level of education, the lower the number of children that participated. More cocoa grower farmers attended public schools than private schools. The result showed that 79% of the sampled farmers engaged in mixed farming while 11% engaged in petty trading especially during off seasons. The estimated income of cocoa farmers ranged between N200,000 – 5 million naira per annum on cocoa production alone. There is need for cocoa farmers to evaluate their management practices in order to boost their income.