ABSTRACT

The study analyzed rural households’ engagements in rice-related enterprises in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study among other things examined the socioeconomic characteristics of the rural households’ engaged in rice-related enterprises, assessed the level of rural households’ engagement in rice-based enterprises, ascertained roles of household members in rice production, processing and marketing, determined the quantity of rice marketed among rural households, estimated income, expenditure, and profit of rural households engaged in rice marketing and assessed income made by provision of ancillary services in rice-based enterprises. The study made use of multi-stage random sampling procedure in selecting 180 respondents. Data for the study were collected with the use of structured questionnaire and analyzed with the use of both descriptive (frequency, percentage and mean score) and inferential statistics (functional analysis of multiple regression). The major results revealed a grand mean of (3.60) affirming that rural households in the study area were highly engaged in rice production, processing, marketing and other ancillary services embedded in rice enterprises. The result also revealed a mean of (4.24) affirming that the rural households in the study area were highly engaged in rice production, the result also revealed a mean of (4.02) affirming that the rural households in the study area were highly engaged in rice processing. Result also revealed a mean of (4.06) affirming that the rural households in the study area were highly engaged in rice marketing. Also youth males ranked 1^st in contributing to households’ labour carrying out (31.96%), (28.95%) and (38.25%) of rice production, processing and marketing activities respectively. Result revealed that (47.30%) of rural households had income of (≤₦100,000). (13%) of the rice farmers produce above 1001 kg of paddy rice,  Rural households in rice-related enterprises were constrained by lack of capital (3.76), high cost of labour (3.66), scarcity of labour (3.23), pest and disease attack (3.18), lack of storage facilities (3.09), long distance to selling point (2.93) among others. The multiple regression results revealed that the coefficients of educational status (0.242, P≤0.01), farm size (0.122, P≤0.1), monthly income (0.269, P≤0.01) and extension contact (0.227, P≤0.05) significantly influenced rural households’ level of engagement in rice production. Again, the multiple regression result revealed that the coefficients of sex (-0.230, P≤0.01), households’ size (0.228, P≤0.01), farm size (0.191, P≤0.05) and extension contact (0.337, P≤0.01) significantly influence households’ level of engagement in rice processing. Multiple regression result also revealed that the coefficients of age (0.225, P≤0.01), marital status (0.222, P≤0.01) and extension contact (0.371, P≤0.01) significantly influenced level of households’ engagement in rice marketing. The study concluded that rural households in the study area were actively engaged in production, processing, marketing and provision of ancillary services in rice-related enterprises. This engagement has generated revenues to rural households and improved livelihoods of rural dwellers. It was thus recommended that young and educated youths should be encouraged by government at all level to engage in rice-related enterprises since the industry was dominated by rural households who were relatively young, active, productive, experienced and educated.