Socio-Economic Factors Influencing the Probability of Market Participation among Cattle Farmers in Adamawa State, Nigeria

World agriculture is facing a tremendous challenge due to rapid growth of human population. Global population is estimated to grow annually by 76 million and to exceed 9 billion by the year 2050 (UN, 2009). In developing countries food consumption, in particular animal-product consumption has rapidly increased over the past decades as a result of population and economic growth, higher disposable income and urbanization (Steinfeld et. al., 2006). However, as Nigerian’s make up about 50% of beef consumers in ECOWAS, It is therefore, experiencing a remarkable demographic expansion and a great change in food habits. With a population growth of about 2.8% per annum, the current domestic production is far from being able to meet up the challenging demand (Bernard et al., 2011).Adesina (2013) lamented that Nigeria will increase the National Dairy Production from its current 469, 000 metric tons to 1.1 million metric tons by attaining an average milk yield per lactating cow from below 500 litres to 2,000 litres per lactation by 2015.Nigeria being the most populous country in West Africa with a population of about 167 million people (National Population Commission, 2012). Moreover, despite the availability of natural resources the country is forced to import more than (25) % of the beef consumed (Bernard et al., 2010). In developing countries, it’s observed that since 1980s the growth of per capita animal-product consumption exceeds that of other groups of food commodities (cereals, roots and tubers) (FAO, 2009). The global production of livestock products (meat, milk and egg) is projected to increase by 50 % by the year 2050 (Steinfeld et. al., 2006). It is observed that one of the most important commodities of livestock subsector is beef cattle, it produce quality meat that has high economic value, and has more important role in public life, important social function in community, therefore it is important to developed the sector and to ensure availability of the product (Prasetyo et. al., 2012).Consequently Markets and improved market access are very essential to rural poor households as a pre-requisite for enhancing agricultural productivity based by improving the competitiveness of farming enterprise, improve the standard of living of rural farmers and to meet up with the challenging global demand by the year 2050. Hence, participation of smallholder farmers in market remains very low due to a range of constraints (Ohenet al., 2013). Market participation among farmers has long been on agricultural economist research programme in both developed and developing countries (Egbetokun and Omonona, 2012). But, still there is a need for more research especially on the area of livestock sector. Marketing in agriculture takes a central role in promoting the future of agricultural business, increased importance and dependence over the past decade on market as the foundation for growth strategies put more premiums on understanding market participation among farmers. Moreover, Transformation from subsistence to more specialized and market-oriented systems of agriculture is of significance for a large number of developing countries with a high degree of dependency on agriculture for livelihoods and national income, such a transformation has enormous potential to promote inclusive growth and development, allowing millions of people to escape poverty and food insecurity (Wickramasinghe and Weinberger, 2013). In Somalia livestock are reared and marketed, in 2011, over three million sheep and goats worth over USD 200 million (39.8 billion) were exported to the Middle Eastern countries (mainly Saudi Arabia) (Wanyoike et. al., 2015). However, it is observed that, limited accesses to capital, as well as the difference in livelihood strategies and motivations are the major factors hindering small -scale farmer’s participation in the livestock marketing in south-Africa (Ndoro, 2014). Gani and Adeoti (2011) lamented that, in Nigeria Socioeconomic variables such as cooperative membership, family size, high output commercialization ratio and education and supportive infrastructure have been found to be important variables affecting market participation among farmers. Bellemare and Barrett, (2006) also observed that, there has been scant research on market participation especially in developing countries like Nigeria.