This study analyzed the economics of small-scale rice processing by women in Yola South Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria. Specifically, the socio-economic characteristics of the women rice processors were described, the profitability of rice processing by the women processors was determined and factors influencing profit from rice processing were determined. Primary data were collected from 173 respondents who were sampled using multistage; purposive and snowball sampling. Descriptive statistics, profitability analysis and multiple regression analysis were employed to analyze the data. The results revealed that 39.31% of the respondents were within the age range of 30–45 years with a mean age of 16 (min) and 70 (max), 78.61% were married, had secondary education (36.52%) with a household size of 6-10 individuals. 82.08% of the respondents do not belong to any association, 95.38% do not have access to credit, and a majority (84.64%) were into rice processing as a primary occupation. The cost and return analysis revealed that the total variable cost incurred by the women processors per month was N508.3194. with the cost of paddy rice constituting 52.08% of the total variable cost. The total revenue from rice processing was N105.61 and return on capital investment was 1.21. The factors that influenced the profitability of rice processing were age (p0.05), educational qualifications (p0.05), membership of association (p0.05), and purchase cost (p0.01). The major constraints faced by the respondents were lack of awareness, price fluctuation, high cost of paddy rice, and poor access to credit among others. A few recommendations among others include women rice processors should form local group memberships to have a sound voice that will effectively champion their cause to have better access to processing inputs and credits, then policies should tilt towards the provision of incentives for better processing techniques.
Shuwa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.