Agriculture as A Business: An Analysis of Arable Crop Farming Practices in Edo State, Nigeria

The study analyzed the practices of selected arable crop farmers in Edo State, Nigeria. Specifically, it determined their participation in arable crops cultivation practices and identified the types of records kept with a view to determining their business orientation. A two stage sampling procedure, comprising of purposive and snowball was used to select 196 respondents with access to a minimum of 2 hectares of farmland but only 179 respondents were used for the analysis. Data were collected through the use of interviews and analyzed with logistic regression model. Results showed that farmers were averagely aged with a mean of 37.2 years. The average farming experience was 15.8 years. Farmers engaged in arable crop production practices such as land preparations, planting, weeding, and fertilizer application among others. However, only the cost of hired labour records was kept while cost of other input resources was not accurately documented. Farm size (wald = 3.81), access to labour (wald = 2.52) and access to credit (wald = 5.19) determined their level of participation in arable crop production. The study concludes that farmers practice agriculture as an art and not as a business. This is because business involves adequate records keeping in order to ascertaining profitability.