Economic analysis of date palm marketing in Jigawa state – Nigeria

Abstract

Jigawa state is characterised by predominance of date palm production and marketing. Thus, this study aimed to determine the economic analysis of date palm marketing in Jigawa State Nigeria. Data were collected through questionnaire distributed to 122 sampled date palm marketers for both wholesalers and retailers. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were employed in the in selecting the sample size while simple frequencies, percentages, means, gross margin analysis and truncated regression model were employed for the study. Marketers were generally the ages of 21-50 years with majority married and were
categorized into retailers and wholesalers. Respondents had one form of formal education or the other with source of supply from wholesalers. Cost of transportation (0.342) and taxes (88.82) reduce gross margin while years of formal education (0.0213), household size (0.0223) and quantity sold (40.8413) increase gross margin for retailers. However, cost of transportation (0.1252), cost of loading and offloading (3.26), cost of commission agents (0.0007) and cost of threading (0.1004) reduce gross margin while quantity sold (104.5665) increase gross margin for wholesalers. The model is well specified with Hat-square value 0.72 and 0.79 for retailers and wholesalers respectively and all the values in the models were well specified with the absence of inter-dependency among independent various ascertained by Wald chi-square of 634.74 and 759.38 respectively. In conclusion, marketeing of date palm is profitable and marketers were married males with one form of education or the other and only cost of transportation reduces profitability for both categories.