PROFITABILITY ANALYSIS OF RICE PRODUCTION IN WESTERN ZONE OF BAUCHI STATE, NIGERIA

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INTRODUCTION
Rice is an annual crop and one of the most important staple food crops in Nigeria. Commercially, the crop is the most important cereal after wheat. It is widely consumed and there is hardly any country in the world where it is not utilized in one form or the other (Omofonwan and Kadiri, 2007;Osanyinlusi et al., 2016). In fact, rice has become a food security commodity as well as generating more income than any other cash crop for the Nigerian farmers.
In 2003, about 580 million tons of rice was produced worldwide, 602 million tons in 2004, 620 million tons in 2005, and 622 million tons in 2006.The production continued to grow yearly; by 2007, the production had risen to 648 million tons. The production reached the peak in 2011 with a total production 720 million tons in order to feed the increasing global population. Furthermore, the world's annual production growth rate was stagnated in 2012 (Olanrewaju, 2010). Rice production remained at low level from 1968 to 1978 perhaps due to dietary idiosyncrasy for tubers. WARDA (1996) reported that paddy rice production had risen from 13400 to 344000 tons in 1970 and area was cultivated from 156,000 to 255,000ha. Since then, paddy rice production has been on the increase. Tremendous increases in area planted, output, and productivity in paddy rice production were achieved over the last two decades and now stand at 1.09 million tons. More so, the production continued to rise higher from 1978 and since 1980. Osanyinlusi et al. (2017 observed that West Africa accounts for 70.4% (approx. 8.74 million ha) of rice area, in Africa. The major contributing countries in this region are Nigeria (47.9%), Guinea (5.20%), Côte d'Ivoire (5%) and Mali (4%).Notwithstanding the importance of rice in the Nigerian economy, local production falls far short of the consumption, resulting in massive importation to bridge the gap. Rice covers a very vital part of the daily meal intake of man, as such it production is very important. However, as internal part of national development in Nigeria, it is imperative to assess the level of rice production in order to satisfy the nutritional requirement of its citizens in terms of quantitative and qualitative source of carbohydrate, and at the same time improve the farmers' income.
The specific objectives include to: identify source of productive resources used in rice production in the study area; examine yield per hectare of rice in the study area; determine the cost and benefits of rice production in the study area.

MATERIALS AND METHODS The Study Area
This study was conducted in western zone of Bauchi State Agricultural Development Programme. The zone consists of seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) including Alkaleri, Bauchi, Bogoro, Dass, Kirfi, Tafawa Balewa and Toro. It is located in the Northern Guinea Savannah (NGS) zone of Nigeria and lies between longitude 10 0 10 ' North 10 0 3 ‫׳‬ 3 ‫׳‬ North and latitude 90 0 , 40 ‫׳‬ East with an altitude of 690.2m above sea level. The Zone has a total population of 2,497,782 people representing 53.41 percent of the total population in the state (NPC, 2006).

Sampling Technique
Multi-stage random sampling technique was used in selecting the respondents for this study. In the first stage, three (3) LGAs (Bauchi, Dass and Toro) were selected using simple random sampling technique. In the second stage, three (3) rice producing communities were selected from each LGA using systematic random sampling technique giving a total of nine (9) villages. In the final stage, 10 rice farmers were selected using simple random sampling technique from each community giving a total of 90 respondents.

Data Collection and Data Analysis
This research utilized primary data which were collected by means of well-structured questionnaires distributed with the assistant of well-trained enumerators. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and farm budgeting model.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Respondents' Source of Productive Resources
Access to productive resources is a key to successful rice production. Table 1 shows that 52.50% of the respondents used mechanical power in rice production. On the other hand, substantial proportion (40% and 36.25%) of the respondents used manual and animal traction in rice cultivation. This could be attributed to the level of awareness by farmers which influence their rate of adoption. Lawrence et al. (1997) reported that both animal traction and manual labour were used for ploughing and harrowing for rice and ridging for maize in Nigeria.
The findings also reveal that most (90%) of the respondents sourced their capital from personal savings. This result indicates that most of rice farmers relied on personal savings to finance rice production in the study area. However, this could affect the level of production since bank loan is usually not accessible to rice farmers due to the problem of collateral as a security to the loan. Ashaye et al. (2017) reported that most of farmers sourced their capital through cooperatives, personal savings and money lenders in Kwara State, Nigeria. On the other hand, the results in Table 1 show that 76.25% of the respondents used hired labour and substantial number (38.75%) utilized family labour in rice production in the study area. This result implies that, majority of rice farmers depend on hired labour for rice production in the study area.
The results also indicate that 63.75% of the respondents used broadcasting, 40% used drilling and 1.25% used transplanting method of rice sowing. Okeke and Oluka (2017) reported that 77% of the farmers transplant rice seeds in South Eastern Nigeria. Although, recent discoveries revealed that rice production is more profitable when planted through transplanting. The Per Hectare Yield of Rice by the Respondents As reported in Table 2, the average yield of rice was 23 bags per hectare in the study area. Majority (53.75%) of the respondents obtained 10-19 bags of rice per hectare. The finding also shows that 25% and 13.75% had 20-29 and less than 10 bags of rice per hectare respectively. This finding indicates that majority of rice farmers harvest less than 20 bags per hectare in the study area. This finding disagreed with Baba and Alhassan (2017) which reported an average rice yield of 32.78 bags per hectare in Niger State, Nigeria.

Costs and Returns of Rice Production in the Study Area
The result in Table 3 depicts the costs and returns of rice production per hectare in the study area. The findings indicate that variable costs represent the largest proportion (82.31%) of the total cost per hectare of rice. Among the variable cost, labour was the largest with 54.75%, followed by fertilizer (13.53%). This shows that rice production is labour intensive in the study area. The total cost of production per hectare was N55,885.25 and the gross farm income per hectare was found to be N115, 450.00. The net farm income per hectare was also found to be N59, 561.79 and a return on every naira invested was N1.29. This implies that for every one naira invested the rice farmers realized a profit of 29k in the study area. This is slightly lower with that obtained by Audu et al. (2018) which reported returns of N2.06 for every one naira invested in rice production in Takum LGA of Taraba State, Nigeria. On the other hand, the gross ratio was found to be 0.48. The ratio is less than one which signified that rice production can survive in the short run production period in the study area.