An analysis of factors influencing access to credit by poultry egg farmers in Southwestern, Nigeria

Poultry occupies a pivotal position because of its enormous potential to bring about rapid economic growth. Agricultural credit is considered  essential to the process of improving agriculture and transformation of the rural economy. This study was conducted among 343 poultry egg farmers in Southwestern, Nigeria. Muiti-stage sampling procedure was employed was employed in selecting the poultry egg farmers in the study area while descriptive statistics and binary logit were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed that majority (74.3%) of the  poultry egg farmers were male with an average age 42 ± 8.9 years. More than half (57.8%) of the farmers were educated above secondary  education. More than half (63.6%) of the farmers had between 5-10 years of layers rearing experience with the mean years of experience being 9.0 ± 5.4 years. Majority (98.0%) of the poultry egg farmers had access to credit while only (2%) of the farmers insured their poultry farms. Factors that influenced the poultry farmers’ access to credit include gender, years of education, stock size and biosecurity level. The study recommends that the government should formulate a policy that will be assisting the poultry farmers to get more funds at the lowest rate of interest. Key words: Poultry, Egg, Credit, Logit, Nigeri