Economics of Palm Oil Production Under Semi-Mechanized Processing Method in Afijo Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria
Abstract
The study analysed palm oil production under semi-mechanized processing method in Afijo Local Government Area of Oyo State. A multistage sampling procedure was used to randomly select 80 palm oil processors. Data was collected with the aid of structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, budgetary analysis and ordinary least square regression model were used for the data analysis. The results showed that majority of the palm oil processors were female. Their mean age was 44 years. The majority of the respondents had one form of formal education or the other. 36.3% of the oil processors had between 10-20 years' experience in oil palm processing. Total cost, revenue, and profit per annum were N1,243,357, N1,673,820 and N430,463.4 respectively with Farm Gross Ratio of 0.30 and Return On Investment of 1.35. The study showed that education had 5% significant effect on the net returns of the processors in the study area. Major constraints were high cost of modern processing facilities and difficulty at getting modern equipment by processors, poor access to good road, poor incentives to processors, insufficient fund for buying of processing machine, low capital, price fluctuations, inexperienced manpower, high cost of hired labor and lack of storage facilities. It was recommended that government should provide social amenities such as such as electricity, pipe borne water, good road network, storage facilities and access to credit facilities and subsidize equipment needed by the processors in order to reduce both running and overhead costs in areas where palm fruits are processed to palm oil production by the processors.
NAJ supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC: BY license and is open access. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Copyright for articles published in this Journal is retained by the Journal.