Causes of Temporal Price Variations of Cereal Grains in Southern Bauchi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Variation in food prices is a common phenomenon in the agricultural marketing analysis. Thus, the study investigates the causes of price variations in some cereal grains in Bauchi State, Nigeria. Data were collected using questionnaires administered to sixty (60) respondents identified through simple random sampling technique and were analysed using descriptive statistics. The result showed that while the majority (78.33%) of the respondents were male and within the age range of 18-50 years, few were female and had greater than five (5) years of marketing experience. Moreover, while the majority (64.67%) of the marketers had a family size of 6-20 persons and whose major secondary occupation were crop cultivation and livestock rearing with 46.67%and 21.67%of the sampled traders respectively. The major constraints of food grain in the study area were cost of transportation, lack of marketing extension agents, low volume of capital, and inaccessibility of Bank loan and unfriendly activities of brokers among others. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that price of cereal grain varies with time and locations and factors such as transportation, lack of marketing extension agents and insufficient market information contributes partly to their prices. It is recommended that stability in price would be sustained if these constraints are to be alleviated in the study area.