Asian Journal of Advances in Agricultural Research

The study examined the factors influencing resource use efficiency among cassava farmers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Well-structured questionnaire was administered on 120 cassava farmers using a multistage random sampling. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression model were used to analyze the collected data. Results of descriptive statistics on socioeconomic variables of the farmers revealed that male (83.3%) dominated cassava production in the study area and 60.80% of them were married while 49.2% of the respondents had less than or equal to 5 persons as their household size. Based on their farm sizes, 67.5%, 26.7% and 5.8% of the respondents had ≤3, 3.1-5 and >5 hectares of land respectively. Also, 43.3% of the respondents had secondary education and above. The result revealed further that 59.2% of the cassava farmers were above 50 years, implying that cassava production in the study area was in hands of elderly people, and 60.7% of cassava farmers generated more than ₦50,000 per annum. Result of multiple regression on factors influencing resource use efficiency indicated that gender, capital, farming experience and cassava cuttings are significant at 1% and 5% respectively at all various categories of farm size, indicating that they were the major determinants of output of cassava production. It is therefore suggested that; youth should be encouraged to actively engage in cassava production. Also, financial institutions and governmental agencies should provide assistance that is easy-burdened to cassava farmers in order to boost the production.