ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF CASHEW MARKETING IN MAKURDI LGA.

ABSTRACT The study examines economic analysis ofcashew marketing in Makurdi Local Government Areaof Benue State. The specific objectives of the study were to; describe the socio-economiccharacteristics of cashew marketing; estimate cost and returns ofcashew marketing; determinefactors 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 usedand well-structured which were administered to the respondents in the study area. Analyticalinstruments such as descriptive statistics, gross margin, multiple regression and factor analysiswere used to analysed data. The result analysed on descriptive statistics reviewed that sex, age,household size,education level, marketing experience, membershipofcooperative, annual incomewere the major socio-economic factors in the study area. The study further revealed that cashewmarketing were dominated by female gender (80.7%) than their male counterpart. The result alsoindicates that most ofthe cashew marketers were married (63.2%), had attended formal educationin one level or the other, had fairly years ofmarketing experience (68.4%), and majority did notbelong to any members ofcooperative (70.2%). The result also further indicates that most of therespondents had their source ofincome as personal savings (61.4%), household size of between5-10 at (56.1%) and most of them were within the youthful age of 21-30 (63.2%). The mean annualincome was N 256,315.79 and most ofthe respondents in the study area had annual income ofN≤100,000 represented at 47.4%. The result on gross margin indicates that the cashew marketingwas profitable in the study area since the revenue generated per/kg (N 1,812.97) exceeds the totalvariable cost (N 61.45) and the gross margin of N 1,751.52 with the cost of transportationconstituting the highest cost represented (71.8%) among the variable cost followed by the cost oflevies (15.2%) in the study area. The return on investment was N 28.50 implying that for each onenaira spent on cashew marketing, a return ofN 28.50 is realised. The result on multiple regressionrevealed that sex (0.47), annual income (0.85) and marketing experience were all significant butwith different signs implying different level ofsignificance. For overall model, the R-square wasfound to be 0.4217 at 42.2% and F-value (3.65) was positive and significant at 1 percent level ofsignificance thus rejecting all the null hypotheses implying that there was significant difference incosts and return and factors influencing cashew marketing in the study area. The result on factoranalysis revealed that factors were named based on socio-economic, infrastructural,financial orfund related and political or administrative factors and those with high loadings were the onesthat affected the respondents in the study area.