Journal of Agricultural Science and Engineering Vol. 1, No. 3, 2015, pp. 143-152 http://www.aiscience.org/journal/jase * Corresponding author E-mail address: abahdanabah@yahoo.com (Abah D. A.) Analysis of the Performance of Paddy Rice Marketing in Benue State, Nigeria Abah Daniel Abah 1, * , Abu Godwin Anjeinu 2 , Ater Peter Iorhon 2 1 Department of Agribusiness, College of Management Sciences, University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria 2 Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria Abstract This study analysed the performance of paddy rice marketing in Benue State, Nigeria. The population of the study was made up of rice farmers in the three (3) geopolitical Zones of the State. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used for this study. One Local Government Area was selected from each of the geopolitical Zones. A total of two hundred and forty questionnaires were administered to the respondents. The objectives were achieved using descriptive statistics and Gross Margin analysis while the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis, student t-test and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation. Majority (68.1%) of the respondents have attained some formal education, (66.9%) have market experience of over ten years, (50.7%) have household size between 6 and 10, (87.3%) are less than fifty years of age, (89.3%) are male while, (65.4%) are small holder farmers with sales income of 200,000 Naira or less per annum. The study also found that Gross Margin per hectare for paddy production in the study area was 112,123.56 Naira while paddy rice marketing was 126% price efficient. The study accepts the alternate hypotheses that states that: the socio-economic characteristics of respondents have significant effect on efficiency; rice marketing in Benue State is profitable and the null hypothesis which states that the rice market in Benue State is not integrated. The study recommends that government should rehabilitate rural feeder roads to enable easy movement of produce and provide credit to encourage increase in farm sizes while marketers should form unions to enable them benefit from economy of scale and enrol for training on entrepreneurship. Keywords Market Performance, Paddy, Rice, Marketing, Costs and Returns, Price Efficiency, Market Integration Received: June 19, 2015 / Accepted: July 3, 2015 / Published online: July 20, 2015 @ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1. Introduction Rice has become the most important staple food and the most common cereal food crop in Nigeria (Akpokodje et al., 2001; NCRI, 2004). It is the fastest growing commodity in Nigeria’s food basket (Akande, 2003) with an annual consumption growth rate of 4.4% (IFDC, 2008). In West Africa sub-region, Nigeria is the largest producer of rice (Oyinbo et al., 2013). About 5.4 million metric tons of rice is consumed annually in Nigeria. However, local production accounts for only 2.3 million metric tons per annum while the remaining 3.1 million metric tons is imported. Increasing rice production could therefore, contribute to domestic food security and foreign exchange earnings for the nation. Rice marketing entails all the activities involved in moving rice from the point of production to where it is needed by the final consumer (Bassey et al., 2013), in the desired form and at the appropriate time. Rao et al. (2012) stated that agricultural marketing plays an important role in stimulating production and consumption and in accelerating economic development. According to Onu and Okunmadewa (2001), market performance includes the relative efficiency of production (that is, price relative to the average cost of production).