Assessing the Competitive African Rice Initiative / German International Corporation (CARI/GIZ) Program Intervention on Productivity of Small scale holder Rice Farmers in Miga Local Government Area, Jigawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed the Competitive African Rice Initiative / German International Corporation (CARI/GIZ) Program Intervention Support to Small Scale Rice Farmers in Miga Local Government Area of Jigawa State, Nigeria. Respondents were drawn using multistage stage sampling technique, the first stage, involved a purposive selection of CARI / GIZ project participating communities, at the second stage, eight (8) communities were purposively selected (Mugina, Hantsu, Mudiga, Miga B, Agufa, Damaganawa, Romawa, and ‘Yandadi) while at the third stage was the selection of (1) small-scale rice farmers groups participating in CARI / GIZ project from each participating community and at the fourth stage (10) small-scale rice farmers participating in CARI / GIZ project were selected at random as the respondents for this study giving a total of (80) respondents and were served with questionnaires. Data collected were analyzed using frequencies and percentages. The result of the study shows the over dominance of male rice farmers and accounted for (93.75%), age, (37.5%) of them are within the age brackets of 31-40 years, married (56.0%), with a household size of 1-10 persons accounted for (52.5%), education was 100% as the respondents have one form of education or the other, farm size (of less than 1 hectare (37.5%), farming experience 1-15 years (87.5%), average yield before CARI/GIZ intervention was 4.3 tonnes while after intervention 6.2tonnes. Major constraints were land tenure system (27.5%), high cost of inputs (23.7%), low access to mechanization (22.5%).  It was concluded that the CARI/GIZ project has an effect on the participants’ livelihood in the study area. Thus, the utilization of technology by farmers will lead to an increase in agricultural productivity in the study area. The following recommendations are proffered, the government should give priority to small-scale rice farmers in the programme of National Agriculture development authority (NALDA) in order to provide more land to farmers, and small landholdings were the major constraints in the study area.