Planning affects every activity of humankind in today's world of work. One of such is family planning and one such activity of man is farming/agriculture. Since family planning results to good health, agriculture as an activity will also be affected correspondingly. This study investigates the effects of family planning on agricultural production. Purposive sampling technique was used to select women farmers of reproductive age (15 – 49years). Data were collected using well structured questionnaire administered to 310 women farmers randomly selected from a list of 3100 reproductive women farmers in semi-urban areas of Imo State, Nigeria. Data were analyzed using percentages, mean and standard deviation. The results showed that the agricultural activities of the women included land preparation (97.7%), harvesting (97.4%), processing (99.6%), planting (94.8%), weeding (96.7%), among other activities. The major sources of information on family planning includes health centres/hospitals (98.1%), radio (90.3%), NGOs (94.8%) and friends/neighbours (67.7%). The available family planning devices/methods were use of herbs (97%), tablets/pills (98%), withdrawals (94.8%), safe period (91.6%) among other methods. The effects of family planning on agricultural production includes improvement of farm labour production(M=3.40), increase family farm labour supply (M=2.78), more women participation in farming (M=3.31), increase food supply to family (M=3.45), guarantees good health of women (M=3.0) and access to productive resources (M=3.07) among others.
Key words: Family planning, agriculture, women farmers, production, reproductive age
