Gender involvement in the production of indigenous vegetables in Southwest Nigeria

It is generally believed that vegetable cultivation is women's occupation. Hence, gender involvement in the production of indigenous vegetables in Southwest Nigeria was studied. The study described the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, their access to productive resources and challenges in production of indigenous vegetable (IV). Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 1091 respondents. Seven states in the southwest covered by the MicroVeg project were purposively selected. Sixty-two local government areas (LGAs) and then 144 communities were randomly selected, respectively. An average of seven farming households were snowballing selected in each community. Validated and pretested interview schedule, focus group discuss (FGD) and in-depth interview (IDI) were used to elicit information from the respondents. Data collected were subjected to descriptive statistics and ATLAS.ti for analyses. The results showed that female (42.59±12.93 years) IV farmers were younger than their male (45.06±13.94 years) counterparts. Few (9.5%) male and female (23.7%) had no formal education. Majority (70.95%) female and male (55.53%) were involved in the cultivating of IVs. More than half (58.99%) male were producers, 32.8% marketers while 37.99% female were primary consumers. Contrary to popular opinions, men cultivated IVs during the dry season while women produced during both dry and raining seasons. Well dug close to their farms was the major source of water for both male and female. Farm inputs and resources such as seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, and land were difficult to access by the female farmers. The challenges of IV producers included; difficulty in accessing seeds, finance, and water during dry season. In conclusion, both male and female were involved in IVs production but female producers faced more challenges in production than male. Hence more attention should be paid to female IVs producers than their male counterparts in the provision of seeds, fertilisers, and storage facilities.