Impact of the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS)’ On Farmers’: Income in Oyo State, Nigeria

The study was designed to assess the Impact of the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) on farmers’ Farm income in Oyo State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was adopted to select a representative sample for the study. Majority (71.8%) of the participants were male, while 28.2% were female. About 67.9% of the non-participants were male while 32.1% were female. The mean age of the respondents in the study is about 50yrs. Majority (55.3%) of the respondents sourced their farm inputs through the agro-dealers. The Probit regression model was used to examine the factors that influenced the farmers’ participation in the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme. The results show that farmers association, Participation in past programme and access to credit were statistically significant at 1%, 1% and 10% level of significance respectively in influencing the farmers’ decision in participating in the GES Scheme. The marginal effect shows that the probability of participating in the GESS by a farmer was reduced by 34.5 percent if the farmer was a member of farmers’ association, this was quite against the a priori expectation of the study. Also, the results from the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) analysis reveal that the Impact of the GESS exerts a positive impact on the farmers’ on-farm income. While the ATE estimates from the PSM analysis suggest that GESS participation increased the farmers’ on-farm income by 119, 927.05 ($399.98). This indicates the average change in farmers’ income who participated in the Scheme. The study further revealed that Growth Enhancement Support Scheme had a positive Impact on the On-Farm Income of Cassava and Maize Farmers in the Study Area. This suggests that productivity-enhancing agricultural innovations can contribute to raising the income of farming households, improve poverty alleviation and food security in Nigeria and other developing countries of the world. It was therefore recommended that farmers should be encouraged or advised to form associations or put themselves in groups in order to increase their likelihood of participation in this Scheme or subsequent programmes and credit should also be made available in form of soft loan to enhance their access to this subsidized farm inputs.