Tomato value chain in Southwest Nigeria: An assessment of economic performance

The study was conducted to assess the economic performance of the tomato value chain in Southwest, Nigeria. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 24 communities in the study area, while simple random sampling techniques were used to select two tomato input sellers, 2 producers, 2 processors, 2 marketers and 2 consumers. In all 240 tomato value chain actors were selected for the study. Descriptive statistics, budgetary analysis and multiple regression analysis were employed to analyze the data. The results showed that the majority of the tomato value chain actors were married and educated with a mean age of between 38 and 49 years old. The result of the budgetary analysis revealed that the value of the return on investment (ROI) of the producers, input suppliers, marketers and processors were 0.54, 0.94, 0.44 and 0.49 respectively. This implies that the tomato business is profitable to all the actors. However, the input suppliers made more profit than other actors in the tomato value chain. The result of the multiple regression revealed that gender, marital status, age, household size, years of education and cost of inputs were the major factors that influenced the profitability of the actors. The major constraints faced by the value chain actors in the study area were identified among others to be price fluctuation, incidence of pest attacks, lack of capital, high cost of inputs, high cost of transportation, high cost of labour, threats from adulterated processed tomatoes, unorganized market and perishability nature of tomatoes. It is therefore recommended that relevant government agencies such as the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) should be encouraged to efficiently monitor tomato value chain processes to improve the health benefits of the produce (tomato) and its products