EFFECT OF RURAL INFRASTRUCTURE ON PROFITABILITY ANDPRODUCTIVITY OF CASSAVA-BASED FARMS IN ODOGBOLU LOCALGOVERNMENT AREA, OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Infrastructural development in Nigeria has been historically linkedto the development of agriculture, exploitation of natural resources and publicpolicies. This study examined the effect of rural infrastructures on profitability andproductivity of cassava-based farms in Odogbolu local government area of Ogunstate, Nigeria. The study was based on a cross-sectional survey of 120 cassavafarmers selected with a multistage random sampling technique from 10 villages.Descriptive statistics were used to generate the composite rural infrastructure indexwhich revealed that 5 out of the 10 sampled villages were under-developed.Economic efficiency in the developed and under-developed areas shows thatfarmers in the developed areas are better off compared to their counterparts in theunder-developed areas. Farm size, years of farming experience and infrastructuraldevelopment index (INF) were statistically significant with negative influence onproductivity of cassava-based farmers. The significance and indirect relationship ofthe years of farming experience and infrastructural development index at p 0.05and farm size (p 0.01) regarding the total factor productivity (TFP) implied thatthese variables decrease TFP. Similarly, the negative sign of the coefficient of INFof -0.742 at p 0.05 shows that the under-development of infrastructural facilitiesobserved in the study area is capable of jeopardizing efforts at improving theproductivity of cassava-based farmers. Therefore, farmer in the developed areascan generally produce more output at lower cost if there is an improvement ininfrastructural facilities in the study area.