ABSTRACT

This study assessed the Impact of Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP) on Dairy Production and Rural Livelihood in Selected Local Government Areas of Kaduna State, Nigeria. The broad objective of the study is to assess the impact of CADP on dairy production and rural livelihood in the study area. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 120 respondents out of a sample frame of 1200 dairy farmers whom are beneficiaries of the project. Primary data was collected with the aid of a well structured questionnaire administered to the 120 respondents from Giwa, Kachia and Birningwari LGAs respectively. The data collected were presented using descriptive statistics like frequency tables, averages and percentages to describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents while the Wilcoxon-signed-rank test statistic was used to assess the impact of CADP on assets, productivity and income of the respondents. The result showed that the average age of the respondents was 42 years with an average of 28 years experience in dairy production. It was also found that the average household size of the respondents is 9 members. The impact result revealed a positive and significant impact of CADP on the assets, productivity and income of the respondents. Specifically, the findings suggested that the beneficiaries experienced a positive increase in their assets, productivity and income by NGN 48,636.83,0.12litre/cow/day and NGN 18,202 per annum respectively. Also, the Wilcoxon-signed-rank test value of 6.47,5.89 and 7.64 revealed that CADP has significant positive impact on assets, productivity and income at 1% level of probability respectively. It was therefore recommended that CADP should be extended to other states and also other value chains in order to improve dairy production and rural livelihood.