Socioeconomic determinants of credit need assessment of Fadama farmers in Delta State, Nigeria

The study examined the credit need of farmers involved in Fadama III programme in the three agricultural zones of Delta State, Nigeria. Specifically examined the constraints faced by them as well as tested the relationship between the farmers’ socio-economic characteristics and their credit needs. Data was collected using the questionnaire method administered to 176 Fadama farmers and was subjected to descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment correlation analysis and analysis of variance. The Socio-economic characteristics of the respondents revealed that Fadama participants were young with mean age of 45 years. They were highly educated (91%) and having some form of formal education. The respondents were of 14 years farming experience and 50.1% of them were married and they were faced with problem of getting credit facilities. It was found that both male and female farmers participated in the Fadama III programme. The average loan received by respondents from the Fadama III programme was N500,000. However, the desired credit volume by the respondents was about N920,000, suggesting a gap between what the farmers were given and what they actually needed. The coefficient of determination of the respondents at 0.05% shows that age (r = -0214), educational qualification (r = 0.180) and farming status (r = 0.157 correlated with their desired credit volume. The study concluded that Fadama III management should increase the volume of credit disbursed to the farmers and remove the bottlenecks in acquisition of credit