The overall purpose of the study was to assess the perception of farming households on off-farm activities as a livelihood coping strategy in Wudil local government area of Kano State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was used for the study. At stage one, purposive sampling technique was used to select two (2) wards; cikingari and sabongari for the study. At stage two, seven (7) farmers’ cooperatives were picked based on convenience and accessibility. At the final stage, simple random sampling was employed to select ten (10) respondents from each of the farmers’ cooperatives, this give a total of seventy (70) sample size for the study. Both primary and secondary data were used, these were derived from administration of structured questionnaire and review of relevant literatures. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, ranking and standard deviation were used to analyze the four specific objectives. Findings of the research shows that majority (38.57%) of the respondents go into fishing activities during off-farm season, followed by those who diversify into clay pot making and carpentry work constituting (11.43%), and (10%) respectively. As regards the respondents’ perception of off-farm income activities; those that strongly agreed to the statement “there was reduced level of idleness/crime rate as a result of involvement in off-farm activities” constitute the highest mean value of (X=4.64), followed by agreement to ‘there was improvement in procurement of inputs as a result of involvement in off-farm activities’ constitute (X=4.37).It was also revealed that there was a tangible increase in the annual income of respondents after involvement in off-farm activities. The major constraints identified were inadequate startup capital, high cost of equipment and transportation and inadequate storage facilities. It is therefore recommended that there should be provision of credit facilities to enable rural dwellers boost their income, subsidized prices of equipment and also provision of stable electricity supply and storage facilities to help preserve perishable products.
Off farm, Household, Livelihood, Coping Strategies
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