Abstract

The study evaluated the determinants of farm labour utilisation in rice production among rural households in South ? East, Nigeria. It described the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and analysed the factors affecting farm labour utilisation in rice production. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 221 respondents from three States of South ? East Nigeria. Data was collected through structured questionnaire and analysed using percentages and regression analysis. Results show that the mean number of persons who have migrated was 4, 42.9% were members of cooperative organisation while 56.8 % of the respondents did not have access to credit. Access to capital (90.1%), competition for labour (73.2%), migration (67.6%) and availability of improved rice production technologies (56.2%) were the major factors affecting labour utilisation. There was a significant relationship between age, membership of cooperative society and number of months of peak labour and labour use at 5% level of significance. The study concludes that rice farmers do not have access to capital and improved rice production technologies and recommends that more capital should be made available for rice farmers while government should improve rural infrastructure to mitigate migration.

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