THE ROLE OF WOMEN-IN-AGRICULTURE AND YOUTH EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMME AMONG IRISH POTATO FARMERS IN PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

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INTRODUCTION
Irish potato (Solanum tubersun) belongs to the solanaceae family. The (Solanum tubersun) is a native of western hemisphere and is believed to have originated somewhere between Mexico and Chile possibly in Andes highlands of Bolivia and Peru. It later spread to other places like England and Ireland where it is predominantly cultivated Irish potato was introduced into Nigeria in the later part of the 19 th century and early 20 th century by Europeans notably the Tin miners in the Jos Plateau (Mado, 2013). It has a high nutritive value and it is grown for food purposes as well as livestock feed. It is also used for industrial purposes (Okeowo, 1999;Burton, 2000). Irish potato is therefore an important crop not only as food crop, but also its social, economic and environmental relationships with the people who grow, sell and consume it (Alimba and Mgbada, 2003). The empowerment of women and youths that are involved in potato production in Plateau State is therefore crucial to poverty reduction. Women-in-Agriculture and Youth Empowerment (WAYE) programme aims at encouraging Irish potato production through participation of the target group as a strategy to combat rural poverty. Therefore, Women-In-Agriculture Programme (WIA) and Youth-In-Agriculture Programme (YIAP) were both initiated and implemented towards reducing poverty, improvement on the income and raising the level of living of rural dwellers to achieve the first goal of the MDGs (Sharma, 2004).
A number of studies have been carried out by different scholars (Shittu, 2012;Kotter and Petras, 2012;Mado, 2013;Shittu and Panan, 2014) to assess the Women-In-Agriculture and Youth Empowerment (WAYE) programme. Their focus, however, was on women and men and only few Local Government Areas were covered, thus limiting the scope on WAYE programme objectives. Similarly, Ifenkwe (2015), in his study on the impact of WAYE programme, concentrated his efforts more on reproductive health (HIV/AIDS and rehabilitation) while the agricultural component and other aspects of the programme were greatly ignored. What is almost lacking in these studies, however, is any direct involvement of youth in the programme and assessment of role of the programme on the livelihood of the participating farmers. Therefore, their studies have left a knowledge gap on role of Women-In-Agriculture and Youth Empowerment programme objectives. Furthermore, these studies are empirically shallow in their analysis and left much to be desired as reliable sources of information to develop specific theories of programmes to alleviate rural poverty and improvement on the livelihood of the rural farmers. This has indeed created knowledge or information gap in the literature. It is based on this, that the study, therefore, intended to provide empirical analysis on women and youth that will be useful for re-assessment and re-orientation of the program's objectives and focus. And thus, the study would make an attempt to find solutions to the objective: The role of women-in-agriculture and youth empowerment (waye) program me among irish potato farmers in plateau state.,the specific objectives are to: describes the socio-economic characteristics of Irish potato farmers in the study area; determine the factors influencing the Irish potato farmers' participation in the WAYE programme and examine the effect of Women-In-Agriculture and Youth Empowerment(WAYE) programme on crop output and income of farmers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS The Study Area
This study was conducted in Plateau State, Nigeria. The State was created in 1976 from the defunct Benue-Plateau State. The name "Plateau State" was derived from the State's spectacular geographical landscape, with the high lands rising from 1,200 meters above sea level at the low lands to a peak of 1,829 meters above sea level. It is located in Nigeria's middle belt and lies between latitude and longitudes and of the Greenwich Meridian. The State is situated in the tropical zone, with a higher altitude range from 12 meters, about 400 feet to a peak of 1829 meters above sea level (Plateau Agricultural Development Programme, 2000). Plateau State has a boundary with Bauchi State to the north-east and Kaduna State to the north-west. It is also bounded to the south-east and south-west by Taraba and Nasarawa States, respectively. The State has a landmass covering nearly 53,585 square kilometers with a population of 3,577, 669 people as per 2006 census (NPC, 2006).

Sampling Procedure
A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select participating farmers for the study. There are nine (9) irish potatoes producing LGAs in Plateau State and they are given a priority consideration for the programme. In the first stage, all these nine Local Government Areas were used for the study. This was because of their high level of production of potatoes in State. In the second stage, two villages were randomly selected in each Local Government Area and this was based on the level of participation in the programme as well as in potato production. This gave a total of 18 villages. During a reconnaissance survey of the study area in 2016, the list of WAYE potato farmers in the chosen villages was compiled with the help of the programme coordinating officers in each LGA and the total number obtained was 711 farmers. Therefore, a total number of 256 Irish potato farmers were selected randomly using the random number table method.

Method of Data Collection
Both primary data and secondary information was used for the study. The primary data were obtained by the use of well-structured questionnaire and administered to the participating farmers and non-participating farmers by the researcher and to be assisted by well-trained enumerators from the Plateau State Agricultural Development Project (PADPs). The secondary information was obtained as base-line information from WAYE head office and the coordinating liaison offices. Also, information from other related studies were used to support the discussion of results of the findings.

Analytical Techniques
Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics was used to achieve objectives (i)describe the socio-economic characteristics of participants in the programme and inferential statistics was used to achieve objectives ii, determine the factors influencing the Irish potato farmers' participation in the WAYE programme. Z-test) was to achieve the objectives iii.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Socio-economic Characteristics of Participating and Non-Participating Farmers
The result in Table 1 shows that the mean age of the participating farmers was 38 years while that of the non-participating farmers was 43 years. This means that the participating farmers were younger in age than the non-participating farmers. This is in line with the major objective of WAYE programme to engage both young men and women in agricultural activities with the aim of improving the living conditions of households in the study area. Age has been found to be an important variable in agricultural productivity; hence both categories of the farmers were within the agricultural productive age range of 30-50 years quoted by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2000;2008). About 65% and 60% of the participating farmers were married and single while 66% and 17% of the non-participating farmers were also married and single respectively. The significance of marital status on agricultural production can be best explained in terms of the supply of family labour (Adewale, 2005).  Source: Field Survey, 2017

Journal of Agripreneurship and Sustainable
The result of the study shows, that (67%) and (33%) of the participating farmers were males and females while 77% and 33% of the non-participating farmers were males and females, respectively. This agrees with the findings of Ayandiji and Adeniyi (2011) who reported that males have dominance potato production activities unlike their female's counterparts because agricultural activities are regarded as labour intensive. The result in Table  1 indicated that majority (63%) of the participating farmers cultivated between 1-1.5ha for Irish potato production while (75%) of non-participating farmers used less than 1ha.This mean farm size cultivated by both categories of farmers was 1.4 ha and 0.5ha respectively. According to Adamu (2019) classification of farm size of 0.1 -5.9 hectares as small farms implies in this study that all the farmers were small scale farmers. This may be due to the inheritance system of land ownership practiced in the study area which results in land fragmentation among farmers, leading to small farm holdings. The implication of small farm size affects the quantities of Irish potato output produced which in turn affect both the income and food security status of the farmers. The result agrees with the finding of (Nwosu, 2007) who reported that majority (82%) of the farmers acquired the farmland through renting with farm sizes ranging from 0.5-4 hectares. Farming experience in Irish potato, the result in Table 1 indicated that, (67%) and (54%) of both the participating farmers and non-participating farmers had Irish potato farming experience between 1-10 years and 11-20 years, respectively. Abonge (2012) opined that farming experience is an important factor in determining both the productivity and the production level in farming. The result in Table 1 reveals that (55%) and (47%) of the participating farmers and non-participating farmers had secondary school education, which constituted the largest number of educational qualifications attained in the study area. Adewale (2005) had identified literacy among other factors as a variable that positively influenced the use of improved agricultural inputs by farmers. According to the distribution of respondents in Table 5.1. The result shows that majority (77%), and (73%) of the participating and nonparticipating farmers have a family size of 1-10 members respectively. This finding agrees with that of Ifenkwe (2012) reported that the average family size in Africa is between 8 and 9 people in a household. The implication of large number in a household can be a motivation to the adoption of innovations because members will provide the required family labour for Irish potato production. This will reduce the cost of production. Tobit analysis examines factors influencing level of participation in WAYE in Plateau State. The results in Table 2 indicate that, commutatively about 17.6% of the variation in level of participation is explained by the variable included in the model. It shows that marital status, years in irish potatoes production, household size, awareness of WAYEP were found to significantly influenced the level of participation at 1%, level of probability whereas only sex, is found significantly influence the level of participation at P<0.05. The implication of this finding is that, the level of participation increases by variation in marital status thus as farmers' marital status changes from single to married, the level of participation equally increases from 1 to 27.6%. It was also observed that as years in Irish potatoes production increase by 1unit, the level of participation increases by 34.7%. Thus, more experience farmers tend to participate more than new in-experienced farmers. So also, as household size increase by 1 person the level of participation increases by 78%. Nonetheless as level of awareness of the existence of WAYE programme increases by 1 the level of participation is equally increases by 30%. Based on these findings, marital status, sex, years in irish potatoes production, household size, and awareness are the major factors influencing farmers' participation in WAYEP. Adamu (2021), factors influencing women farmers' participation in Development Exchange Centre (DEC) microcredit programme of Kaduna State, Nigeria; shows that level of education (1%), age (1%), house size (5%), credit (10%), farm experience (10%), extension (5%) and years of involvement in cooperative society (5%) were significantly related with level of participation in (DEC) microcredit programme.

Effect of Women-In-Agriculture and Youth Empowerment (WAYE) Programme on Crop Farmers' Output and Income
The results in Table 3 shows, the calculated Z-statistics was 14.7; and at 0.01 level of significant, the critical table value of Z was ±1.96. Since the calculated Z-value (14.7) is greater than the Z-critical or Z-tabulated value, it implied that there was significant difference in the mean crops output level of WAYE programme participants, and non-participants. Also, the estimated mean crops output of participants was much higher than that of non-participants, (537,807.1kg) as against (165,571.43kg), as indicated in Table 3. Hence WAYE programme participants declared a higher level of output from their crops output than non-participants. Hence, the impressive difference in the farmers mean crops output levels were largely attributable to farmers' access to WAYE programme. The calculated Z-statistic value for income was 24.19 but at 0.01 level of significance, the critical or table value of Z is ±1.96. Since the calculated Z-value (24.19) was greater than Z-tabulated, it implied that there is significant difference in the mean income of WAYE programme participants and non-participants. Also, the estimated mean income of beneficiaries (₦749,379.50) was discovered to be much higher than the estimated mean income of non-beneficiaries (₦234,222.20). Hence, the WAYE programme participants had higher mean income from their irish potato production than non-participants. Therefore, the findings confirmed that the impressive difference (₦515,154.30) in the mean income of WAYE programme participants from non-participants might largely be attributable to their access to WAYE programme.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the empirical evidence emanating from both descriptive and inferential statistics employed in the analysis of the role of women-in-agriculture and youth empowerment (waye) programme among irish potato farmers in Plateau State. It has been observed that, loan provided to irish potato farmers are of short duration with repayment period of less than one year. Majority of the farmers relied on waye programme and were able to obtain N876,000 and above which they are required to repay between 6 to 12 months. WAYE programme is a tool that could be used to improve on the income and crop outputs of irish potato farmers and thus empowers them for a better living. It is therefore recommended that WAYE programme be extended to other farming communities.