I
n Nigeria, most farming activities rely on family labor.
However, rural-urban drift and the movement of young
people away from agriculture are making labor increasingly
pause. Thus, labor has become a major constraint to expanding
the scope of production by small-scale resource poor farmers.
This paper provides an empirical relationship between labor
and poverty using data from households. Through a multi
stage sampling procedure, 150 farming households were
selected using questionnaire. Results of Foster, Greer and
Thorbecke decomposition show that poverty incidence, depth
and severity increase with increase in labor employed in farm
operations implying that poverty is directly related to labor.
Finding further reveals that the difference in poverty incidence
of one of the sub-group (1–50 Vs 50–100) pair is statistically
significant at (P< 0.05). Results suggest that the mandays of
labor employed significantly affect the poverty incidence of
farm households.