Paper short abstract:

This study revealed that youth migration has some negative penalties on the rural areas especially on agricultural production. When agile and active youths leave rural farming activities in the hands of the women and aged people, it causes a severe reduction in the level of food production.

Paper long abstract:

Migration is a common livelihood strategy for households across Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. Migration, which is referred to as the movement of people from one area to another and this affects labour force available for agricultural production. In particular, rural youth are those more likely to migrate in response to the lack of gainful employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in agriculture and related rural economic activities.

The study examined the reasons and effects of youth migration on agricultural production in South West, Nigeria. A multistage sampling procedure was used to select 375 rural farming households in the two selected states. 75 percent of the farmers were male, with a mean age of 55 years having at least primary school education. Some of the identified reasons for youth migration included lack of electricity, pipe borne water, lack of communication facilities, lack of good road network, unemployment and education. Principal effects of youth migration were loss of family and hired labour with adverse consequence resulting to decline in agricultural output, reduction in population of the rural dwellers leading to under development of the rural area. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a negative correlation between agricultural production and youth migration (r = -0.654;p ≤ 0.01).

Recommended therefore is provision of basic social amenities in rural areas as a way to retain the young energetic youth in food production and foster development of the rural areas.