EFFECTS OF FADAMA III PROJECT ON LIVELIHOOD ACTIVITIES OF SMALL￾HOLDER FERMERS IN KEBBI STATE, NIGERIA.

The study was conducted to examine the effects of Fadama III additional funding (AF) project
on livelihood activities among smallholder farmers in Kebbi state, Nigeria. A multistage
sampling procedure was used to randomly select 180 participant farmers to constitute the
sampling size for the study. Primary data and secondary source of information were used and
the data were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistic like
frequency, percentage and mean score were used to analyze the data, The result revealed that
45.1% of farmers were within the age bracket of 31-50 years, with the mean years of 45.6.
Majority of participant farmers representing 67.2% were males while 32.8 were females. A total
of 43.9% of the participant farmers had 6-10 members in their household, and the average
household size was 12.2 members. It was revealed in the result that greater proportion of 31.6%
of participant farmers had 11-20 years of farming experience and the average farming
experience of 22.1. About 86% have been involved in Fadama membership for 6-15 years, with
average membership years of 10.9. The result also revealed that the major livelihood activities
engaged by respondents were crop production, animal rearing, poultry production, non-farm
activities and agro- processing. However some problems were encountered by the respondents.
The study recommended that there is need for Fadama participants to have access to credit as
financial assistance from Fadama project cannot meet their demand for inputs, various stake
holders including farmers should be involved in planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation
of the programme, and the programme should be sustain.