Impacts of Farm Business of School (FBS) Intervention on The Income of The Cocoa Farmers in Nigeria

Abstract

This study was designed to empirically investigate the impacts of Farm Business School (FBS) intervention on the income of cocoa farmers in some selected states in Nigeria. Primary data were collected through direct personal interviews, and with the use of a well-structured questionnaire from 300 sampled cocoa farmers. The data analytical techniques employed in this study include descriptive statistics, endogenous switching regression (ESR) and propensity score matching (PSM). The results from the descriptive statistics for participants and non-participants showed that most of the farmers were relatively old given life expectancy in Nigeria as 52 years. Participants and non-participants in the study area had a mean age of 54 years. The cocoa farming has been dominated by male farmers. The result of ESR was based on the average treatment effects of participants in FBS on income, and this shows that participation in FBS increases income significantly, and farmers that did not participate would have benefited significantly had they participated in FBS. PSM analysis indicated that participants in Farmers Business School and The PSM results imply that FBS training has increased the income of participants by 343,950.84 point. The results showed that participating in Farmers Business School leads to significant gains and impacts on income of cocoa farmers. Also, variables like level of education, farm size, amount of credit obtained, household size, and number of visits by extension agents have a significant impact on the level of participation. Therefore, research institutes and other agencies of government should improve upon their services of creating awareness for cocoa farmers to encourage the participation of more farmers in the training programme to have increased income. The combination of ESR and PSM analysis will also add value and contribute to the literature on the best approach to address impact analysis.