International Journal of Horticulture, 2016, Vol.6, No.3, 1-7
5
Orebiyi, et al (2002) is that, there will be a decrease in agricultural productivity in the long run when the ageing
farmers can no longer perform. The arable crop farming is gender biased; male (78.3%) while female (21.7%), the
enterprise is male dominated. This is the peculiarity in the study area, where the female is disallowed from
laborious work and obligated to attend to milder activities in the community. This confirms the earlier
conclusions of Obasi (2007) and Orebiyi et al
.
, (2002) that women are more involved in the less laborious
activities. Majority (95.8%) of the farmers was married with mean household size of 7 (Table 1). Having large
household size is advantageous because it substitutes for labor cost (Obinne, 1989; Ezeh, 2006). About 25% of the
respondents had no formal education while 34.2% completed primary school. Less than 15% of the farmers had
tertiary education with mean years of education of 9 which is the drop out from secondary school in Nigeria. This
shows that relatively the farmers had access to and acquired formal education to a certain extent which in turn
reveals the level of development of the grassroots in the country. The finding indicates that most respondents were
not learned and this means that there is low tendency of adopting and assimilating of agricultural innovations or
technologies among arable crop farmers in the study areas. The modal farm size ranged between 2.01 and 3.00
hectares of land. The mean farm size was 2.54 hectares of land which falls within the range of land holding of
small scale farmers and they use low level of fertilizer. This is a confirmation that smallholder farmers are
operating on a smallholding (Ezeh et al., 2008). The low holding of farm size was due to partitioning in the
inheritance process and probably due to land reform. And this invariably will lead to more intensive land use
systems. This implies farmers are forced to shorten fallow periods, increase investment on land and manage soil
fertility through the addition of fertilizer.
Factors influencing the use of fertilizer among the small holder farmers
The result of the estimation of the factors influencing the use of fertilizer is presented in Table 2. The variables
relating to total farm output (N) (X
1
), level of education (X
4
), farm size (X
5
), number of farmland owned (X
6
) and
total cost of crop inputs (X
13
) were significant at 5% level, implying that these variables are the important factors
influencing farmers’ use of fertilizer in arable crop production in the study area. The level of education was
significant, implying that farmers with higher education use fertilizer more than farmers with low level of
education and that education is a major factor influencing the use of fertilizer among smallholder arable crop
farmers. This could be attributed to the fact that higher education enables the farmer to know and want to harness
the benefits of the use of improved inputs such as fertilizer in crop production. The farm size was significant and
positive. This result is similar to the findings of Amanze et al. (2010).
This can be explained in terms of scale of
operation, it has been established from literature that a higher scale of operation results in a high production
efficiency and mostly a positive returns to scale, so farmers with large farmlands are disposed to using all
necessary input including fertilizer indicating that farmers with larger farm size use more fertilizer than farmers
with small farm size, this variable has direct relationship with the variables total output in naira, number of
farmland owned and total cost of crop input which are also significant at 5%.
Constraints to fertilizer use in Osun State
From the logistic regression result, age of farmer (X
3
), family size (X
11
), income from other farm enterprise (X
7
),
and price of fertilizer (X
10
), are highly insignificant at 5% significant level and can constitute the constraints to the
use of fertilizer. Age of farmers has positive coefficient and it is insignificant, older farmers tend not to use
fertilizer due to their cultural and traditional knowledge of practicing agriculture and suspected health risk of
fertilizer consumption. Most farmers perceived price of fertilizer as being a deterrent to its use. Fertilizer prices
keep on increasing and do not offer farmers much incentive to its use. A major characteristics of sole farming as a
production organization is that the farmers household and the farm are not separated in terms of asset and liability
thus, the farm family size can be a major constraint because the farmer will distribute his total income between his
household and the farm and the higher the family size the more he spends to cater for them which may cut back on
the total amount invested in farming. High income from other farm enterprise would make a farmer to shift
attention from farming hence invest less and use less of fertilizer.
Conclusion and Recommendations
