Performance Assessment and the Decision to Participate in Small and Micro Agribusiness Enterprises in Delta State, Nigeria

In order to examine the performance of small and micro agribusiness enterprises (SMAE) as well as factors that determine entrepreneur's participation, 561 enterprises were randomly drawn from urban and peri-urban locations in Delta State, Nigeria. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics Binary probit model was used to determine the effect of personal, family, farm and location characteristics on the decision to participate in small and micro agribusiness enterprises. The results of the probit analysis indicated that age of operator, household size, marital status, educational status positively affect the decision to operate a small agribusiness enterprise while wage employment and non farm income have a negative influence. Furthermore, the study found that majority of the enterprises were young with a median age of 6 years while about 50% of respondents were engaged in retail trading. About 30% of entrepreneurs had vocational and tertiary education; average household size was 9 persons per household with a mean age of 43 years. Food retailing had the highest average sales revenue/year (N=209,270.00) (USD 1,268.30) while the least was crop farming (N=135,030.00) (USD 818.36). Income/worker/year ranged from N=14,770.00 (USD 89.52) in food retailing to N=27,850.00 (USD 168.79) in fish farming. The total workforce in the 561 SMAEs surveyed was 1971 persons; 1005 full-time staff and 966 casual workers with an average workforce of 3 persons/enterprise. Personal savings, friends and relatives, loans from cooperative societies, were the major sources of start-up capital. Lack of access to credit, high cost of credit and labour were the topmost constraints to SMAEs operations in Delta State, Nigeria. In order to expand their asset base and boost production, the development of business partnerships among SMAEs is recommended