Economic Analysis of Cooperative Societies and Agricultural Productivity in Rural Households in Delta State, Nigeria

The study assessed rural household participation in co-operatives on rural household agricultural productivity. The sampling technique used was a Multistage procedure to randomly select 120 co-operators and non-cooperators respectively. But only 115 co-operators and non-cooperators were utilized. The active mean age was 42 years and married farmers co-operatives (62.6%); farmers non-cooperatives (55.7%) rural households with secondary educational level farmers co-operatives (42.6%); farmers non-cooperatives (24.4%) obtained their sources of credit facilities from co-operatives. The study revealed that most rural households engaged in livestock and crop production obtained their sources of credit from co-operatives. It was discovered that rural households have constraints in obtaining credits from conventional banks (mean=1.7). The study recommends that policies should be inclined towards agricultural co-operatives to increase food productivity and food security. Again, that there should be an enabling law to enforce the conventional banks to provide soft loans via rural households’ co-operatives for their farming activities.