Abstract

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The unique characteristics of agricultural products including tomatoes pose a lot of problems both to the farmer and final consumer. Its seasonality, small unit production and bulkiness exert various pressures on handling, packaging, transportation and sales with an adverse attendant effect on the market price. The perishable nature of tomato and the loss incurred during marketing calls for attention. Hence, this study was carried out to analyze structure, conduct and performance of tomato retailers in Abeokuta South, Ogun State, Nigeria. A multistage and simple random sampling technique was used in selecting the respondents. A total of 80 tomato retailers were randomly from eight (8) markets. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and interview schedule, administered on the respondents were analyzed using descriptive statistics and graph such as: marketing margin, marketing efficiency, Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve. The study revealed that tomato retailing is a profitable business with a marketing margin (M.M) of 536 Naira. The study further revealed that tomato retailers are economically efficient with a marketing efficiency (M.E) of 1.31 and finally tomato retailing is competitive as well as there is inequality of income among tomato retailers with a Gini coefficient of 0.8 despite the fact that transportation, losses due to breakage, losses due to rodent attack, poor quality of products and shortage in supply were identified as major problems encountered by tomato retailers in the study area. It is therefore recommended that appropriate infrastructure should be constructed in the study area to ease the movement of goods to markets which will therefore minimize cost incurred by tomato retailers.

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