EMPOWERMENT OF RURAL WOMEN FARMERS AND FOOD PRODUCTION IN ESAN WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF EDO STATE, NIGERIA

The imperatives for women empowerment in recent time have become apparent. However, the drive to empower rural women farmers has suffered several setbacks engendered by insufficient evidences that resources geared towards their empowerment will yield substantial outcomes towards food production. Consequently, this study was designed to elucidate the outcomes of empowerment access by rural women farmers in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria. While five research objectives were generated, three hypotheses were formulated and tested. The study was anchored on two theories: Gender and Development theory and the Structural-functionalist theory. The study adopted the descriptive and exploratory research design to examine the extent of empowerment of rural women farmers and how it affected the food production capacity of the women farmers in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria. A sample size of 457 was systematically generated using the standard formula for calculating the minimum sample size when the universe contains 10,000 objects or more developed by Babalola (1998). Being a community study, the purposive method of selecting respondents was adopted. Triangulation of methods, involving the use of social survey, focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, non-participant observation and case studies, was adopted in the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. Fieldwork was conducted between April and July, 2014. Data analysis was done with the use of descriptive statistical tools including the crosstabulation, chi-square test and multiple regressions. On the other hand, qualitative data were analyzed with content analysis. Some findings from the study are: (i) most (71.8%) Esan rural women farmers access farmland through their husbands; (ii) the source of land determines the type of crop cultivated by Esan women farmers; (iii) only 7.4% among the respondents had access to advanced farm technologies; (iv) availability and access to agricultural extension services and trainings were found to be grossly scarce among the rural women farmers with only one respondent found to have accessed them; (v) only 1.1% of respondents were found to have accessed any form of credit facility in the study area; (vi) the farm settlement in Esan West Local Government Area is moribund; and (vii) it is common among Esan people for women to have custody of land on behalf of their young children after the death of their husbands. The two overarching findings are that: (i) Esan rural women farmers are highly disempowered; and (ii) respondents who had access to empowerment facilities recorded increase in their food production up to 33%. Some of the recommendations include designing special microfinance loans for rural women farmers, which could be channeled through their existing self-help groups; the revamping of dwindling farm settlements; and the development and transfer of solar energy for processing and storage of farm products.