Abstract

This study was carried out to determine the impact of cooperative society among the fish farmers in Lagos State. A multi stage purposive sampling techniques was used to select five Local Government areas notable for fish farming business. 30 fish farmers were selected from each of the Local Government areas for cooperative society and 30 farmers from non cooperative society having a total of 150 respondents each. A well structured questionnaire was used to obtain information and 130 questionnaires were retrieved each from cooperative and non-cooperative members. Analytical techniques used include descriptive statistics and Tobit regression Analyses. The results show that the mean age of the farmers is 56 and 57 for cooperative and non-cooperative fish farmers, respectively. Majority (83%) and (93%) of the cooperative and non-cooperative fish farmers respectively were males. It was discovered that both farmers have an average of 8 household members. It was revealed that larger percentage of the cooperative fish farmers (50%) used amount N100,000 to N500,000 as the initial investment while (56%) of the non cooperative used the same amount as capital investment. The result of the Tobit regression analysis indicates that gender of farmers is significant at 5%, years of formal education; membership of cooperative and the cost of inputs were significant at 1%. Since majority were producing for profit making, it is suggested in the paper that government should increase the supply of credit to cooperative farmers and embark on enlightenment campaign to increase the participation of rural farmers in cooperative activities.

Key words: Impact, cooperative society, fish farming, commercialisation, Lagos State.