Abstract

This study was carried out in Oyo and Ondo States of South – Western Nigeria to investigate the determinants of households’ access to agricultural production credit under the National Special Programme for Food Security (NSPFS). A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 600 farmers from 4 ‘local government areas’. Descriptive statistics and probit regression model were used to analyse the primary data obtained from the survey conducted. The findings of the study showed that majority (53.3%) of the farmers have access to NSPFS credit while the rest (46.7%) did not have access to credit under the programme. The result of the probit analysis showed that farmers’ age, access to other credit, access to extension services, financial contribution in his or her group, farm location, size of landholding and membership of registered farming group are the most important variables that significantly influenced access of households to NSPFS credit in the study area. The results further revealed that majority of the beneficiaries are old and those farmers whose farms are located outside the project catchment or NSPFS participating ‘local government areas’ did not have access to the credit. Most of the non-beneficiaries had no formal education and did not have access to extension services. Therefore, this study recommends that youth and younger population should have greater access to credit under the NSPFS. It was also recommended that relevant policies to address the constraints and limitations to formal education and extension services should be designed by stakeholders in agricultural development to increase households’ awareness and access to NSPFS credit. The scope of implementation of the programme should be expanded to cover more ‘local government areas’ to extend the benefit of the programme to reach majority of the poor farm households.

Key words: National special programme for food security (NSPFS), credit access, probit regression model.