ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF CASHEW MARKETING IN MAKURDI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF BENUE STATE.

The study examines economic analysis of cashew marketing in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State. The specific objectives of the study were to; describe the socio- economic characteristics of cashew marketing; estimate cost and returns of cashew marketing; determine factors influencing cashew; and identify constraints faced by cashew marketing in the study area. Taro Yamane formula was adopted to determine the sample size of 60 and primary data was used and well-structured which were administered to the respondents in the study area. Analytical instruments such as descriptive statistics, gross margin, multiple regression and factor analysis were used to analysed data. The result analysed on descriptive statistics reviewed that sex, age, household size, education level, marketing experience, membership of cooperative, annual income were the major socio-economic factors in the study area. The study further revealed that cashew marketing were dominated by female gender (80.7%) than their male counterpart. The result also indicates that most of the cashew marketers were married (63.2%), had attended formal education in one level or the other, had fairly years of marketing experience (68.4%), and majority did not belong to any members of cooperative (70.2%). The result also further indicates that most of the respondents had their source of income as personal savings (61.4%), household size of between 5-10 at (56.1%) and most of them were within the youthful age of 21-30 (63.2%). The mean annual income was ₦ 256,315.79 and most of the respondents in the study area had annual income of ₦ ≤100,000 represented at 47.4%. The result on gross margin indicates that the cashew marketing was profitable in the study area since the revenue generated per/kg (₦ 1,812.97) exceeds the total variable cost (₦ 61.45) and the gross margin of ₦ 1,751.52 with the cost of transportation constituting the highest cost represented (71.8%) among the variable cost followed by the cost of levies (15.2%) in the study area. The return on investment was ₦ 28.50 implying that for each one naira spent on cashew marketing, a return of ₦ 28.50 is realised. The result on multiple regression revealed that sex (0.47), annual income (0.85) and marketing experience were all significant but with different signs implying different level of significance. For overall model, the R-square was found to be 0.4217 at 42.2% and F- value (3.65) was positive and significant at 1 percent level of significance thus rejecting all the null hypotheses implying that there was significant difference in costs and return and factors influencing cashew marketing in the study area. The result on factor analysis revealed that factors were named based on socio-economic, infrastructural, financial or fund related and political or administrative factors and those with high loadings were the ones that affected the respondents in the study area.