EVALUATION OF THE ACTIVITIES OF COCOA BUYING AGENTS IN SOUTHWESTERN NIGERIA

Cocoa buying agents play a major role as middlemen in cocoa marketing in Nigeria. They facilitate the movement of cocoa beans from the farmers to the end-users thus sustaining the continual production of cocoa. Therefore, a study like this which evaluates the activities of cocoa buying agents is quite imperative. Hence, the objective of this study was to assess the activities of cocoa buyers and estimate their profitability. The study was carried out in Ogun and Oyo States of Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select ninety-four respondents from the study area. Information was collected from the respondents with the aid of structured questionnaire and the data retrieved from the information collected were analysed using descriptive statistics as well as budgetary analysis. The study shows that 79.79% of the respondents are aged 50 years and below and the mean age of the buyers was 47 years. Result of the analysis shows that all the respondents are formally educated. Also, 6.40% of the respondents are licensed buying agents while 93.60% are local buying agents. All the respondent buying agents claimed that they sourced their products (cocoa beans) from cocoa farmers. All the respondents claimed that they assist cocoa farmers by giving them loans, 74.47% of the cocoa buyers supply inputs such as chemicals and implements to the farmers while 70.21% of the respondents claimed that they give trainings to farmers on how to produce good quality cocoa beans. The result of the budgetary analysis shows that the average gross margin per annum per buying agent was N417, 361.28 showing that cocoa buying agents in the study area are operating profitably. The study recommends that government should assist cocoa buying agents by giving them soft loan to run their business. Also, cocoa farmers should be enlightened on the need to process their cocoa beans properly before it is sold to the buying agents.