Profitability Analysis of irrigated Rice (Oryza Sativa L.) Production in Lake Gerio, Yola North Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria

The study examined the profitability of irrigated rice (Oryzasativa L.) production in Lake Gerio,Yola North Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria. The underlying objectives of the study were to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of irrigated rice farmers in the study area,determine the costs and returns associated with irrigated rice production and identify the constraints associated with irrigated rice production in the area. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 83 irrigated rice farmers. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics and gross margin analysis.The result revealed that irrigated rice production is a viable venture as farmers earned a total revenue of N 646,235.66 and a gross margin of N176,037.85 per hectare respectively. The return on every Naira invested was N1.37k with operation ratio of 0.73. It was further revealed that majority (78.3%) of the respondents were male, 60.02% were within the age of 31-50 years, 73.5% were married, majority (82%) of the farmers having a large household size, 76% of the farmers have attained one form of education or the other and 76.6% of the respondents had farm size ranging from 0.1-1.5ha. Also, the major constraints that farmers encountered were poor access to loan, low market prices, limited farm size, grazing by animal, bad road network and high cost of fertilizer among others. The study recommends that financial institutions and stakeholders in the agricultural sector should ease farmers access to farm credit so that they can expand production and also generate more jobs to our teeming unemployed youths,government should reinstate the agricultural price policy in other to overcome the problem of low market price,farmers are encouraged to form to cooperative association so that they can interact with one another,inputs like; fertilizer, hybrid seed and agrochemicals should be subsidized and delivered to farmers timely to improve productivity and efficiency.