Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 19 ISSUE 4
Written by Diana Maria NECULA (ILIE), Daniela Nicoleta BĂDAN

Credit is an important factor in rice production and it is needed by farmers to acquire needed agricultural inputs. This paper examined the effect of access and utilization of credit on rice productivity in Oyo state Nigeria. Two hundred and two farmers were interviewed using structured questionnaire through a probability to size sampling technique. The analytical tools adopted for this study are descriptive statistics and ordinary least square regression (OLS). The socio economic characteristics of rice farmers revealed that majority (78.3%) are in their productive age (30-59). Also, more than sixty percent of the farmers can at least read or write and fifty one percent are male. For land ownership 64% of the farmers have 2-3.99 hectares of land while 74% have household sizes of between 4 and 9. 53.5%, 31.7% got their credit from formal and informal sources while 14.9% of them got their credit from both sources. To determine the effect of credit usage on productivity Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression analysis was used. It was found out that access to credit was significant at 1% affecting the effect of credit usage on productivity while farmer’s age and household size has negative coefficient with an R- squared value of 0.524. It was found out that access to credit has a positive coefficient and significant at 1 percent, implying that for every unit increase in access to credit there will be an increase of 87.3 percent in the output of the farmer. It was recommended that since farmers’ age has negative coefficient implying that for every unit increase in farmers’ age, there will be a decrease of 0.846 percent in the output of the farmer, thus farming should be made more attractive so that more youths will venture into farming increasing the availability of labour. For every unit increase in household size, there will be a decrease of 8.32% in the output of the farmers. Farmers should therefore be educated on family planning methods to reduce their family size, thereby having more money to spend on their farms. Credit should be made more accessible to the farmers thus increasing their productivity.

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