This study determined an optimum farm credit for small scale farmers in Benue State. A set of
structured questionnaires were administered on 180 respondents randomly selected from eighteen
communities in the state. Linear programming was used to obtain an optimum farm credit for farmers
engaged in four farm enterprises in the study area, namely, yam and cassava mix, maize and sorghum
mix, yam and sorghum mix and cassava and maize mix. The results showed that N58,498.80 was
obtained as the optimum farm credit. This optimum solution further showed that farmers can only
cultivate a total of 1.7 hectares of land from which a total of N499,304 can be generated as net revenue
for the farm. The optimum farm credit determined for this model is subject to influence by socioeconomic
variable, such as farm size, cash, household size and educational status of farmers. It was
then recommended among other things that financial institutions should increase their credit volume to
farmers and that government should also remove all bottlenecks to land acquisition for farming.