Poverty and youth unemployment remained a challenge in Nigeria‟s economic development. Interventions initiated to curb the menace have failed. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development adopted the value chain approach to implement the agricultural transformation agenda in 2011. This study was conducted to identify the major value chain actors, their activities, value creation and its distribution in Kano River Irrigation Project (KRIP) of Kano State, Nigeria. Probability random sampling was used to identify respondents. Primary and secondary data were used in the study. Descriptive statistics, conjoint analysis, budgeting technique and commodity chain analysis were used. Descriptive statistics and budgeting techniques were use to organize the socioeconomic data. Conjoint analysis was specifically used to identify consumer preference. The commodity chain analysis technique was used to assess the value added by major actors along the value chain. The major rice value chain actors include; inputs dealers, farmers, paddy traders, parboilers, millers, milled rice marketers and consumers. Majority of the sampled input dealers, farmers, paddy traders, millers and milled rice marketers were male. Majority of the parboilers were women. Most of the actors, except parboilers, were literate. But all the actors belong to business associations, even though not all of them reap the benefit of their membership. The average farm holdings was 2.6 hectares with yield of about 2.9 tons/ha. More than 80 percent of the estimated 189,630 tons of paddy produced in the study area is sold. The remaining is used for home consumption and seeds. About 156,000 tons of paddy is injected into the market through wholesalers (65%), rural assemblers (15%) and rural retailers (2%). The paddy moved to the millers for milling. The milled rice is sold to both urban and rural wholesalers. It is then sold to consumers through rural and urban retailers. Rice production was profitable in the study area. A total N120,000 is realized from one hectare of rice profit as N200,000. The marketers realized a net margin of N50 from a bag of paddy. Parboilers obtained a profit of N50 on every bag of paddy. The value added by the farmer to a bag was N3,700. The paddy assembler added N400 to it, the parboilers added N57 and the miller added N122 to it. Low price of paddy, limited access to credit, shortage of labour, erratic supply of electricity, high cost of fertilizer and marketing were the major constraints impacting negatively on the rice value chain actors in the study area. It is recommended that major rice value chain actors‟ accessibility to appropriate technology should be enhanced by development agencies to improve productivity and reduce operating costs. The millers and marketers should be introduced to joint-venture projects by development agencies, to pool resources to acquire and manage joint assets. This will lead to improved quality, reduced cost and improved earnings to the parties involved. Price is the most important variable that influenced consumer preference, efforts should be made by development agencies to reduce cost of doing business along the value chain in order to increase demand for local rice.
