Income Generating Economic Activities Among Raphia Palm Farmers in Delta State Nigeria

Abstract

The engagement of economic activities through raphia palm production has provided jobs qualified teeming
youths. The study identified socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, involvement in raphia palm
income generating economic activities; perceived most income generating economic sources, and constraints
militating against involvement in raphia palm income generating economic activities. A multistage sampling
procedure was used to select 150 respondents. A well-structured questionnaire was employed in data
collection while descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. The result revealed that most (97.40%) of
the respondents were men with an average age of 44.47 years. They were mostly involved in income
generating economic activities such as wine preservation ( = 1.79), Local gin (alcohol) production ( =
1.75) and palm wine tapping ( = 1.71). Local gin production ( = 3.48), wine preservation ( = 3.46), palm
wine tapping ( = 3.32) and edible worm production ( = 3.23) were the most perceived income generating
economic sources. Inadequate fund ( = 3.76), unavailability of modern processing technologies ( = 3.62)
and lack of access to land ( = were the major constraints militating against farmers involvement in raphia
palm income generating economic activities. It is therefore recommends that government should promote and
develop those identified income generating economic sources in order to serves as a veritable source for
creating employment for its teeming unemployed youths.