Author's Name:	Ume S.I., Onunka B.N., Nwaneri T.C. & Okoro G.O
Subject Area:	Other
Subject	Other
Section	Research Paper

Socio Economic, Determinant, Sweet Potato, Production, Small holder Woman Farmers.

This study is an investigation on how sweet potato female farmers’ socio economic characteristics affect their production in Ezza South, Local Government Area of Ebonyi state, Nigeria. The study sought to describe the socioeconomics characteristics of the female farmers, determine the effect of the female farmers’ socioeconomic determinant factors on sweet potato production in the study area.. estimate the cost and return in sweet potato production and identify the problems faced by sweet potato farmers. One hundred and twenty farmers selected using multi – staged random sampling technique for the study. Structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from the respondents as related to the objectives of the work for analysis. Percentage, multiple regression analysis and Gross Margin analysis were used to analyze the objectives of the study. The results showed that most of the respondents were aged, had access to credit and well experienced in the vocation. The socio-economic factors that affect sweet potato production in the study area were household size, Level of education, farming experience and farm size. The major constraints to sweet potato production in the study area were poor access to creditl, high cost of transportation and vine shortage. The study recommended that credit should be made available to farmers at affordable collateral. More so, there is need to ensure access road to rural area and urban markets toavoid high cost of transportation which makes farmers to sell their product at the farm gate at a very cheap rate. Finally, there is also need to ensure the availability of improved varieties of sweet potato vine to farmer in order to put to end the extent of recycling of old and local varieties stocks in farmers possession in order to boost their production.