Agricultural Employment in Rivers State, Nigeria: A Case of National Programme for Food Security.

This study assessed the impact of National Programme for Food Security (NPFS) on self-employment in rural areas in Rivers State. Multi-stage proportionate stratified random sampling and cluster sampling techniques were adopted to obtain 90 and 30 samples from participating and non-participating farmers respectively. A well-structured questionnaire, in-depth interview and direct field observations were employed to elicit responses on socio-economic characteristics and other relevant variables from 120 subjects. Descriptive statistics of frequency count, percentages and mean were used to present the socio-demographic variables and answer the research questions. Z-statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 per cent level of significance. The results show that non-participating farmers were more self-reliant than participating farmers; therefore, government NPFS programme did not impact significantly on self-employment. Low participation of farmers was responsible for the failure of NPFS programme. The study recommended constant review of agricultural programmes, reformed input supply system and periodic training and retraining of farmers. Key words: Agriculture, National Programme, Self-employment, Food Security.