Contributions of Cassava Enterprises to Household Welfare in Ejigbo Local Government Aresa of Osun State.

<br>ABSTRACTCassava is one of the widely grown food crops, in which most farmers are involved in Nigeria. The welfare situation of agricultural entrepreneurs is generally deplorable in the country. This study examined the contributions of cassava production enterprises to household welfare. The study pursued socioeconomic and enterprise characteristics of the entrepreneurs, as well as their levels of household welfare. The study was carried out in Ejigbo local government area of Osun state. The study sampled cassava entrepreneurs. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select a sample of 120 respondents in the study area. The results of findings were analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentages while multinomial regression was used to draw inferences between the variables of the hypotheses. The study found out that 25.8% of the respondents were between the ages of 31 and 40, 69.2% were male, 37.3% had primary education and 75.8% were married. Almost all (95.8%) of them grow cassava, 74.2% process cassava while 91.7% involved in cassava marketing. Also, 43.4% of the respondents had between 1 and 10 years of farming experience and 52.5% of them were among the households in non-poor welfare category. The multinomial regression analysis showed that level of involvement in cassava enterprises significantly (P=0.998; p=0.074) increased the odd of moving out of the poor household welfare category, it also showed that level of involvement does not significantly (B=0.512; p=0.299) influence respondents in non-poor household welfare category. Cassava enterprises promotion can be pursued to address poverty alleviation programme in the study area.<b>Keywords: </b><i>Cassava enterprises, constraints, involvement, household welfare</i>