Assessment of Rural Households Participation in Cooperative Societies and Agricultural Activities in Delta State, Nigeria

The primary objective of this research is to examine the contributions of co-operatives on rural household agricultural productivity. Multistage sampling was employed in the random selection of 120 co-operators and non-cooperators respectively. But only 115 co-operators and non-cooperators were utilized for the study. The active mean age of 42 years and married female rural households with secondary educational level obtained their sources of credit facilities from co-operatives. The study also revealed that most rural households with an increase in livestock and crop production obtained their sources of credit from co-operatives. The study also revealed that rural households have constraints in obtaining credits from conventional banks. The study recommends that government policies should be geared towards agricultural co-operatives to increase food productivity and food security. The study also recommends that the government should put enabling laws to enforce conventional banks to provide soft loans via rural households' co-operatives for their farming activities.