ASSESSMENT OF EFFECTS OF RURAL- URBAN MIGRATION ON AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN ESAN CENTRAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, EDO STATE, NIGERIA.

The study examined the effects of rural- urban migration on agricultural production in Esan Central Local Government Area of Edo State. Multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted in selecting respondents for the study. Structured questionnaire and interview schedule were used to collect data from the respondents for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution, percentage and means while multiple regression was used to test the hypothesis. The result showed that the farmers were of mixed gender (56-3% male, 43.6% female). The mean age was 43years, 76.2% has formal education and an average household size of 5 persons with average of 2 migrants per household. Adequate extension education (mean = 1.16) was ranked first among the strategies for reducing rural migration while the multiple regression result showed that marital status (18.775, ≤ 0.05), education (20.900, ≥ 0.05), household size (20.025, ≤ 0.05) had significant relationship with the member of migrants in a household. It was concluded that migration majorly affected the respondents on labour shortage and significant relationship existed between the farmer’s marital status, education, and the number of respondents in a household. The study recommended provision of proper agricultural extension programmes and needed social amenities in the study area as identified as major causes of rural- urban migration. Proper agricultural extension programmes should be made available in the study area as this would helped to increase farmers knowledge on production practices and possible ways of reducing the effects of labour shortages. Lastly, farmers are encouraged to adopt farming technologies that will require less number of persons to carry out e.g. mechanization. This will address the problem of labour shortage