Livelihood and Income Diversification Strategies among Rural Farm Households in Niger State, Nigeria

Poverty incidence in Nigeria is higher among the rural-folks, that is, households that rely mainly on agricultural income. Income diversification is therefore seen as a way to secure income and to increase welfare of the farm households. This study investigated livelihood and income diversification strategies among farm households in Niger State, Nigeria. The study utilized data obtained from administering questionnaire to 287 farming households who were selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and Herfindahl diversification index. The study revealed that mean age, household size, and farm size of the respondents were 42, 7, and 2.82 respectively. A total of 46.4% of the respondents had no formal education and only 12.9% had attained formal education up to the tertiary level. Majority, i.e 94.8% had no access to credit. The study further revealed that Farm income accounted for 63%, while off-farm income accounted for 37% of the total income of the sampled farm households. Over whelming majority of the farm households had more than one source of income representing 91.3%, meanwhile non-farm activities identified in the study area are forest production, agricultural trading business, agricultural processing, business (fuel, telecommunication services, spare parts dealers, etc), transportation business, blacksmith, civil service, domestic duties, handcraft, artisanship, construction worker, tailoring, health worker, and traditional medical practitioner which jointly accounted for 93.96% participation rate and 36.9% of the total income. The result of income diversification pattern and strategies adopted by the respondents were full time farming, farmer and farm worker, farm and skilled non-farm, and mixed (from all these activities). The study therefore recommend that farm households should diversify their sources of livelihood into non-farm activities available in the study area so as to increase their earnings to bridge the poverty gap and improve their livelihood, and also the level of literacy among rural farm households, and financial markets should be looked into by the government when formulating policy and developmental issues.