Groundnut, a staple food in many developing countries is often grown by small farm holders and is considered women's crop in Western Africa. This study was therefore carried out to examine the contribution of groundnut production to the livelihood of rural women groundnut farmers in Kwara state. A three- staged sampling technique was used to select a total of 167 women groundnut farmers from both Edu and Patigi local government areas of the state while descriptive and inferential statistics (Spearman Rank Correlation) were used for data analysis. The study showed that groundnut production contributes 70.4% to income while other business activities by the respondents contributes 29.6% to their income. Lack of credit facilities (2.23) and lack of improved seed varieties (2.04) were considered severe constraints by the respondents. The study also showed that groundnut production contributes to the human, financial, natural and physical assets of the livelihood of the farmers while contribution to social asset is low. Results from hypothesis test showed that lack of credit facilities and lack of improved seed varieties as constraints showed significant relationship with the livelihood of women groundnut farmers. It is therefore recommended that women groundnut farmers should be provided with credit facilities and efforts should also be made to bridge the gap between farmers and various research institutes so that improved varieties of groundnut can be made available to farmers in other to solve the problem of non- availability of improved seed varieties
Key words: Groundnut, Production, Livelihood, Constraints
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