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Abstract
The study was carried out to analyze the costs and returns of tomato marketing in Ibadan South east local government of Oyo state. The targeted population for the study is the tomato marketers markets in Ibadan south east Local Government of Oyo State. Multi stage sampling techniques was used to select 120 respondents for this study. The results shows that majority (91.7%) of the respondents were female, 39.2% of the respondents were between 41-50 years of age, majority (96.7%) of the respondents were married, most (60.8%) of the respondents were Muslims, average (50.0%) of the respondents have above 11 years of education, majority (74.2%) of the respondents have 1-5 household size, 25.0% of the respondents have 6-10 households, almost all (97.5%) of the respondents was traders, 40.0% of the respondents had 11-20 years of experience, majority (94.2%) of the respondents have access to credit, almost all (98.3%) of the respondents have access to market information, almost all (99.2%) of the respondents belongs to association, and 40.0% of the respondents earned N20,001 –N40,000 monthly from tomato marketing. Furthermore majority (70.8%) of the respondents used farm gate–wholesaler-retailer-consumer as marketing channel for their tomato marketing, tomato marketing was profitable with gross margin of N507,102. Road access problem high cost of purchasing from farm gate and poor credit access were the major problems faced by tomato marketers. Moreover, socio economic characteristics have significant effect on the profitability of tomato marketing in the study area with the p-value of (0.000). From the findings of this study it is recommended that from the fee paid by the marketers to the marketer association should be make to provide infrastructural facilities especially electricity, which may help to extend the period of marketing of fresh tomatoes and improved method of storage by refrigeration and government should reconstruct or renovate the damaged road as the will prevent the tomatoes from being damaged.