Socio-economic factors that influence productivity in vegetables in Sandakan district Sabah

Vegetable production is one of the crucial components in agricultural practices. It is always cultivated for dietary consumption as well as source of downstream economic sectors. Cultivation of vegetable is also important to feed population's nutritional need in urban and semi-urban area such as Sandakan district. Besides that, there are few items or aspects that always act as socio-economic factors that influence crop productivity from time to time. Therefore, a research was conducted in Sandakan district from August until November2 015 to find out socio-economic factors that influenced vegetable productivity in that region. It was carried out in survey form with structured questionnaire sunder the cross sectional design. From this research, demographic characteristics and socioeconomic background of vegetable farmers as respondents were identified. The data collected from these respondents were then analysed through descriptive and inferential statistics by using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) Version 21 software. Generally, majority of vegetable farmers in Sandakan district was made up of male and non-Malaysian citizens with mainly Tator ethnicity from Indonesia. Most of the respondents had received schooling. The average age was 37.85 years old, and had average farming experience of 8.23 years. Average of their vegetable farm size was 1.93 acres. Most of their farms were under rental status that ranged from less than 1 year to 10 years. Majority of them had received 11 to 20 times of extensional service contact in the past 12 months. Almost all respondents had no labour force in their farms, and all respondents did not received access of credit. Besides that, the study found that there was no significant correlation relationship between demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the vegetable farmers and vegetable productivity. However, there were socioeconomic factors found that dominantly influenced vegetable production including farmers' education level, farming experience, and age associated with involvement of young people. Therefore, education level should be strengthened by improving extension service and initiating knowledge and skill sharing between technical staffs and the farmers in order to strengthen vegetable productivity in Sandakan District