Essential Factors Associated with Growing of Improved Cassava Varieties as Food Security Crop in Oyo State, Nigeria

Essential factors which influenced the growing of the improved cassavavarieties as food security crop were appraised in this study. Multistagesampling procedure was employed. Purposive selections of two (2)agricultural zones were carried out within Oyo State. At the second stage,two (2) Local Government Areas within the two zones were randomly selected.27% of the populations of registered full-time cassava farmers were randomlyselected for interview giving a total of 201 cassava farmers. Tobit regressionmodel was the analytical tool employed to isolate the critical factors. Theresults show that the growing of improved cassava varieties as food securitycrop among cassava farmers were averagely practiced and done. Eight groupsof factors were isolated with 55.60% contribution to growing of improvedcassava varieties. However, factors such as location of farmer, educationalstatus of the household head, annual income realized from cassava sold,membership in a farmer based organization; favourable price and type oflabour used by household have significant positive effect, while farm sizeand farming experience of the cassava house hold have significant negativeeffect as factors associated with growing of improved cassava varieties. Thefindings from this study suggests that there is urgent need for relevantstakeholders in agriculture and government to consider the factors associatedwith growing of improved cassava varieties by cassava farmers, if cassava tuber production will continue to leverage and promote our economy andserve as beneficial crop in term of food security and safety