Determinants of Households’ Preference for Home Grown Rice Consumption in North Central, Nigeria

The study was carried out to evaluate the determinants of household preference for homegrown rice consumption in North Central, Nigeria. The study had five specific objectives, while one hypothesis was tested for the study. Multi stage sampling technique was used to sample respondents, while a well-structured questionnaire was used for data collection from the 360 respondents used for the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to actualize the objectives of the study. The results show that 68% of the respondents were female while 64.9% of the respondents were married. Also, 57.1% had an average of five people in their households while 38.6% of the respondents were between the ages of 31 to 40 years. The result further showed that 80.4% of the respondents had at least a secondary school education. Only about 12.0% of the respondents were members of any association while majority (44.6%) of them were business owner.

Result of the regression analysis on the influence of socio economic characteristics on households’ preference for home grown rice revealed educational qualification (p=0.00), membership of association (p=0.00), and income (p=0.00) were all significantly at 1% probability level while occupation (p=0.089) was significant at 10% probability level. Cooking quality (3.53), swelling capacity (3.59), availability (3.31), taste (4.28), absence of foreign particles (4.12) among others, were identified by respondents as factors that influence their choice of rice. It was recommended that local rice producers should ensure that improved varieties of rice are produced so that consumers’ nutritional needs are met through the home grown rice. It was also recommended that rice processing and milling should be carried out with modern techniques and equipment, so as to ensure that the processed and milled rice is clean, neat and void of any foreign material.