Abstract

Aim: The study was conducted to describe socio-economic characteristics of rice marketers, identify and describe the marketing channels for rice, identify the factors which influence profitability of rice marketing and identify problems encountered by rice marketing in the study area.

Materials and Methods: Purposive and multistage random sampling techniques were used to select 120 rice marketers (40 wholesalers and 80 retailers). The analytical tools used in study included descriptive statistics, multiple regression technique, flow charts and net return analysis.

Results: The majority of the wholesalers (92.5%) and retailers (83.8%) sourced their operating capital from personal savings. There was no specific rice marketing channel in the area as retailers and consumer’s a time buy directly from the farmers/producers. The gross margin obtained was N34,270.8 for retailers and N116, 839.8 for wholesalers while net-return (NR) was N30,721.4 for retailers and N10,134.6 for the wholesalers. The significant determinants of rice wholesaler’ net income were labour cost, transportation cost, price of rice, education level and marketing experience, while significant determinants of rice retailer’ net income were labour cost, transportation cost, processing cost, educational level and marketing experience. The major problems encountered by rice wholesalers were inadequate finance, price fluctuation, low access to credit, and high transport cost as a result of poor transportation network, while inadequate finance, low access to credit, high cost of transportation and price fluctuation were the major problems encountered by the retailers.

Conclusion: It was concluded that rice marketing was determined to be a profitable enterprise to both rice wholesalers and retailers. Factors that influenced net returns of  wholesalers' rice marketing includes: transportation cost, price of rice, education level, marketing experience and labour cost; while that of rice retailers are educational level, marketing experience, labour cost, transportation cost and processing cost.

Statistics