Effect of Socio-Economic Characteristics of Farmers’ Cooperative Societies on Poverty Reduction among Rural Dwellers of Ogun State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Prevalence of poverty has been a common phenomenon that cut across nations of the world. Indeed, poverty and unemployment are the main problems facing many people especially the rural dwellers this day; Poverty has simply refused to recede in Nigeria mostly among the rural household dweller farmers and the number of people living below the poverty line has continued to increase as the years go by. The study examined effect of farmers’ cooperative societies on poverty reduction among rural dwellers of Ogun State, Nigeria. The study examines the role of the socio-economic characteristics of rural cooperative farmers on their income, and determine the role of farmer’s cooperative on loan accessibility for members in the study area, Primary and secondary data were used for the research, two hundred ninety (290) respondents were used for the study and also both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the research. The tested hypotheses and results revealed that social economic characteristics of farmers is very essential and has significant role on their poverty reduction. Also, loans granted by the cooperative societies to members helped in poverty reduction among rural dwellers members and has positive influence on their members’ welfare. Finally, measure suggested and used by cooperative society helped in combating the various farmers’ problems and has significance influence on the farmer’s effort in improving their living standard. And conclude and recommend that to enhance poverty reduction among the rural households, female household counterpart should be encouraged to join farmer’s cooperative so as to alleviate poverty among the rural farmers’ dwellers and cooperative societies should give full support and credit to profitable farmers with good credit records and thorough supervision so as to enlarge their farm size, thus, earn more income and improve their living standard.