Abstract

This study focused on analyzing the determinants of farmers’ access to credit from microfinance banks by farmers in Southern Agricultural Zone, Nasarawa State. The specific objectives were to determine the factors responsible for farmers’ access to microfinance credits and identify the constraints militating against access to microfinance credit by the farmers. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 60 rural farmers from three Local Governments Areas in Nasarawa State. The study adopted the descriptive statistics and Logit Regression to achieve the research objectives. The result of the study revealed that gender, marital status, membership of cooperative, farm size, farm ownership and years of education were factors that determine farmers’ access to credits in the study area. High interest rate, delay in disbursement of loans and difficulty in documentation were the major constraints militating against effective accessibility of microfinance credit by farmers. The study recommended that farmers should participate in cooperative organizations as it plays a key role in determining their access to credit as well as owning larger farms to serve as their collateral when accessing loan.