An Investigation on Level of Utilization of Local and Improved Practices by Rice Value Chain Actors in Benue and Nasarawa States, Nigeria

The study was carried out to investigate the level of utilization of local and improved rice practices by value chain actors in Benue and Nasarawa states, Nigeria. The population for the study comprised all the rice value chain actors in Benue and Nasarawa States. The specific objectives of the study were to: investigate the local practices of rice value chain actors; and investigate the level of use of improved practices by rice value chain actors in the study area. It was evident from the study that the pooled percentage for the two states (Benue and Nasarawa) was 22.5% for those who utilized traditional hoes while those who utilized cutlasses in the two states have pooled value of 21.2% and those who utilized winnowing baskets with a pooled value of 19.3% for the two states respectively. The level of utilization of improved practices by rice value chain actors in the two states for marketers, producers and processors have mean pooled value of 2.36, 2.21 and 2.14 respectively. Based on the study, it was concluded that the major local practices of rice value chain actors in the two states are still at crude level and the level of awareness of the rice value chain actors on improved practices is high. It was therefore recommended that, government should make available improved practices which are more less labour intensive but rather with higher performance at affordable price to the rice value chain actors; enough capacity building should be enforced to train intensively more rice value chain actors, and more awareness should be created by government capacity building agents among rice value chain actors on their operation to maximize their performance.