Figure 4: Farmer's access to credit by Crops 5.1.14 Farmers' association membership Membership of association exposes farmers to several benefits such as training, inputs purchase at reduce price, easy marketing of farm produce and easy access to credit. From table 14, it was found that sizeable number of participating farmers were members of cooperative association. For cassava, about 92% of the participants were members of cooperative association, about 91% of sorghum were members while 100% of rice participants were members of cooperative association. This in fact will give these farmers opportunities to access much assistance from government and nongovernmental organizations Finally, on the number of years these farmers have participated in cooperative associations, it was found that the average for cassava was 6 years, for sorghum it was 4 years while for rice it was 5.5 years.
Table 14: Membership of Associations by farmers Membership of association Yes No Years of participation 1-5 6-10 11-15 >15 Average
Cassava 55(91.67) 5(8.33)
Sorghum 73(91.25) 7(8.75)
Rice 80(100) -
33(55) 13(21.67) 3(5) 6(10) 6
39(48.75) 19(23.75) 8(10) 4(5) 4
47(58.8) 24(30.0) 7(8.75) 2(2.5) 5.5
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