Abstract

Understanding the role that gender plays in fish culture enterprises is critical for designing agricultural policies to increase productivity and enhance economic growth and to reduce poverty. This study was carried out in Epe Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria. The research investigated the budgetary analysis and factors influencing profit level of culture fish enterprises by gender. This was done by examining the socio- economic characteristics of the respondents, the budgetary analysis and also factors influencing the profit of fish farming enterprise. This was achieved through random selection of 149 respondents. The method of analysis used was descriptive analysis to determine the socio economic characteristics of the fish farmers; profitability ratio was applied to examine budgetary analysis, while regression was done to capture the factors influencing the farmers profit level. The results showed that 54.4% were male and 45.6% were male. Majority of the respondents (67.9% male and 55.9% female) were married and (32.1% male and 44.1% female) were in the single category. It also revealed that 23.5% male and 17.6% female went through tertiary education. 43.2% male and 36.8% had about above 6 years experience in the business, 43.2% male and 42.6% female started their business with their own personal savings and 66.7% male and 70.6% female farmers purchased their land. The beta weight ranged from 0.0107 to 0.3547 for male and0.0532 to 0.2234 for female. The result shows that out of all (4) independent variables considered, fingerling is the most important input for the male farmers, while for the female fish farmers, feed is the most important input. It was concluded that the venture is profitable to both gender, and it was recommended that young people mostly female should be encouraged to practice fish farming, and also involve in carrying out research on fish farming as this may help in solving the problem of food security and food sufficiency.