Abstract

The study assessed labour influence on oil palm production in Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo state. Specifically it examined the socio-economic characteristics of farmers, determined the man-hour labour used for production activities in oil palm and palm oil production, determined the influence of labour usage on oil palm production in the study Area. The study also determined other factors that influenced the output of oil palm among 120 farmers who were randomly selected from five towns in the study area.. Data was collected with structured questionnaire. Multiple regression was applied to determine the influence of labour usage on oil palm and palm oil production. Three functional forms of regression models were used namely: Linear, semi-log and Cobb Douglass functions. The majority of the respondents were in the range of 41-50 years. The mean age was 37 years and 71.7% of them were male. About 18% of the respondents used family labour in carrying out farm activities, 78.3% used hired and family labour, while 3.4 % made use of hired labour only on the farm. The average man-hour family labour used is 1703 and 8364 man-hour of hired labour was used. Out of the three functional forms; Cobb Douglas functional form was selected as the lead equation, with R2 of 0.44. Labour usage had a coefficient of 0.055 and was statistically significant. Level of experience had a negative coefficient of -0.123 while educational level had a coefficient of 0.07. This shows increase in labour by a unit will increase output by 5.5%. It was recommended that credit facilities should be made available to the farmers to enable them pay for hired labour since it outweighs family labour usage.

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