Women in Agriculture (WIA) and Rural Households' Welfare in Oyo State; Evidence from Maize Arbitragers in Ibarapa Central LGA

Rural-urban based business is critical to poverty reduction among rural people most especially women who are mostly buying produce from the farm gate or rural market and transport them to the urban areas where it can command better price and in turn good profit. The study was carried out in Ibarapa Central Local Government Area of Oyo State to examine Women in Agriculture(WIA) as maize arbitragers and household poverty. A multistage sampling technique was used alongside 120 copies of structured questionnaire to collect data from intended respondents. The specific objectives bordered on describing the socioeconomic characteristics, categorizing respondents into poverty groups, determining the quantity of maize traded and poverty status of respondents. Results of socioeconomic characteristics showed that the majority (93 .1 % ) were young and agile, 98% were educated while the mean age was 15 years among others. Households' classification showed that poor and non poor were 56.9% and 43.1 % respectively. The OLS multiple regression result indicated chosen exponential functional form as lead equation showed that co-efficient of multiple determination(R2) expressed that 21 % of dependent variable was explained by independent variables modelled while price of maize, years of experience, years of education, and cooperative membership among others determined the quantity of maize traded by arbitragers. Probit result showed that years of education, household size, dependency ratio, household income, number of people per room and number of food intake influenced poverty status at varying significant levels among respondents. The result of hypothesis tested showed that null hypothesis was rejected at P<0.0 1 showing that there was a significant relationship between income of arbitragers and their. poverty status. It was recommended that credit facilities and infrastructure be made available to ease rural business transaction.