Agriculture is the main source of growth for developing countries and helps reduce poverty and preserve the environment (World Bank, 2008). In Benin, agriculture accounts for about 75% of the total population and contributes significantly to the creation of value added (29.89% of GDP in 2008) and nearly 80% of export currencies (PSRSA, 2011). Since the 1960s, the government of Benin has invested in the  development  of canal irrigation schemes in order to intensify food crop production and reduce food insecurity (Nonvidé faced with the scarcity of financial institutions (banks), decentralized financial services (DFS) are becoming an indisputable resource to serve the rural world in financial services. It is important to note that despite the progress made in the past two decades, access to financing in developing countries remains  a  major  problem  (Kacemand Zouaril, 2013). New Rice for Africa (NERICA) was developed by the Africa Rice Center by crossing high-yielding Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) with locally adapted African rice (Oryza glaberrima Steud.). Community-based seed production of NERICA varieties was introduced in a village in central Benin in 2006 through seed dissemination projects. It was reported that high-adoption rates of these varieties were mainly due to high demand by development projects for seed dissemination, and to incentives (that is, selling the rice seed at a higher than local market price to a local extension service) for farmers to grow NERICA varieties (Yokouchi and Saito, 2017).

According to Nonvide (2018), irrigation offers important opportunities for enhancing crop yield and production in developing countries. Also, the future security of the supply of rice for food in Africa depends on improving the level of local production to achieve self-sufficiency. In order to cope with the existing gap between production and actual demand, combining a high level of rice blast tolerance and a high-yield potential is necessary (Yelome et al., 2018).

In Benin, rice producers face enormous funding challenges. However, according to Sossou (2014), important constraints limit the development of the rice sector in Glazoué among which we can mention the lack of microcredit. The difficulty of access to financial services for farmers is one of the main obstacles linked to agricultural development in Benin (Sossou, 2014). According to Singbo and Nouhoeflin (2012), producers are often poor, not because of the size of their farms, but because of lack of access to institutional services. According to Lesaffre (2000), the short-term global financing of the agricultural sector is 14% in developing countries (UEMOA). On the other hand, in the tertiary sector, overall financing amounts to 79.18% (Sossa, 2011). Thus, to answer this problem of financing in the rice sector is to find very adapted financing mechanisms with very convenient means of granting.

In Benin, the microfinance sector has experienced significant growth with the creation of several credit institutions, cooperatives and mutual savings companies and the establishment of agricultural financing mechanisms in rural development projects and programs (Sossou, 2014). These institutions often fail to meet the demand for credit from agricultural people. This forces them to adopt credit rationing, which is an element that directly or indirectly affects the efficient use of credit and therefore has a negative impact on its performance.

Despite the efforts of microfinance institutions to serve the farming community, they do not have access or have difficult access to financial services. This is because there is reluctance related to the supply of credits. These are repayment prospects that are not secured due to weather conditions, low yields, or the unstable socio-economic environment (Deveze, 2000). With a sub-equatorial   climate,   the   commune   knows   two    rainy seasons a small and two dry seasons including a small one too. The average annual rainfall is 959.56 to 1255.5 mm; the average temperature varies between 24 and 29°C. The relief is marked by the presence of plateaus (200 to 300 m), dominated by hills in places (Sokponta, Gomé, Camaté, Tankossi, Tchatchégou, Thio, Ouèdèmè, Assanté and Aklampa), which constitutes tourist assets. Hydrography is formed on one hand by a major watercourse Ouémé River which waters the commune at the villages of Aklampa, Bethel, Riffo and part of the district of Zaffé and small local watercourse (Adoué, Kotobo, Trantran, Tehoui, Antadji, Tchololoé, etc.) which encourage the development of off-season market gardening and artisanal fishing activities. There are also several types of soils, the most important of which are: white sandy soils suitable for growing cassava, groundnut and groundnuts; the black sandy soils found locally and suitable for all crops; stony soils that are generally poor.

With regard to the rice potential offered by the municipality of Glazoue, with a total area of ​​9456 ha and agro-ecological conditions favorable to rice production, rice farmers are limited to their financial power of production if only for sustenance. Faced with this situation, it is important to think of an external or internal financing mechanism that can reliably support rice farmers with the aim of intensifying rice production. To the best of our knowledge, prior research has not yet systematically examined such a mechanism, the issue addressed in this article. The econometric approach is used in this study to better tailor the determinants of rice farmers’ access to credit in Benin. The paper first presents a brief description of the conceptual framework and methodology of the study, then analyses and discusses the determinants of rice farmers access to credit in Benin and draw some policy implications.

Data collection

The data was collected in the municipality of Glazoue. This town was chosen because of its strong rice potential and many rice farmers who live there. The selection of rice farmers surveyed was conducted randomly in 9 villages in the commune (Figure 1). A total of 120 rice farmers were surveyed. This size is function from the available number of rice farmer in each village of Glazoue. In each village, the random method was used to select the rice farmer producers. The data was collected using a structured interview guide designed for this purpose. The data collected were related to the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, the evolution of rice production, the use made of rice production, and access to credit for rice production. Table 1 shows the sample size in the study area.

Socio-economic characteristics of the respondents

The description of the respondents is shown in Table 3 that 64.17% of men are surveyed against 35.83% of women. These results show that the majority (67.39%) of men have access to credit for agricultural production. In terms of informal education, only 41.67% of respondents are literate. Of those rates with literacy training, only 21.62% do not have access to credit. Rice is the main income speculation for more than 60% of respondents, of whom more than 58% have access to credit for rice production. In terms of capacity building, descriptive statistics show that 79.17% of the respondents were trained in rice production. Training in rice production is a factor that has facilitated access to credit because more than 95% of those trained in rice production had access to credit for rice production.

Table 4 shows that the population with access to credit is relatively young. The size of households in this population is on average six inhabitants against  eight  forthose who do not have access to credit. The part of income from rice production in the monthly income of the farmer is about 50% for those who have access to credit unlike those who do not have access to credit which is about 30%. This result shows that rice production generates subsequent income for those who have access to credit because it makes it easier for them to spend on production. Similarly, farmers who have received credit sell more than 65% of their production against an average of 57% for those who do not have access to credit.

Results of econometric modeling

The estimation of the logit model with the Stata 13 software gives the results which are shown in Table 6. The results of the logit estimation of the model show the probability of the LR statistic of 0.00. This value, much less than 0.05 makes it possible to affirm that the model is globally significant at the 1% level. The probability statistic of Hosmer-Lemeshow (HL) test at the 5% level is 0.61; which is greater than 0.05. Thus, the model presents a quality of fit that is good.

The prediction model is as shown in Figure 3 and shows that 86.67% of the predictions are correct and only 13.33% are incorrect. This result makes it possible to accept the hypothesis according to which the model has a high predictive power.

The value of the pseudo R² of McFadden which makes it possible to appreciate the explanatory power of the model gives a value of 0.6085 or 60.85%. This means that more than 60% of the explanatory variables make rice farmers' access to credit easier to understand. The evaluation of the discriminating power of the model involves the calculation of the area delimited by the ROC curve. In the case of the logit model of this study, the area  delimited  by  the  ROC   curve   is  95.56%,  which reflects an exceptional discriminating power (Figure 2).

Literacy

Literacy is an important factor to have access to credit for agricultural production. The regression coefficient for this variable is 3.078 and a P-value of 0.001. This variable is significant at the 1% level. This result means that the fact that the farmer is literate increases the chances of having access to credit for rice production by 21.72 times. Thus, the econometric analysis shows that the level of literacy of the credit applicant is a significant factor for access to credit. More the applicant is alphabetized, more likely he is to obtain credit from financial services.

This result confirms those of Evans et al. (1999), which showed that low literacy levels affect the decision of the credit grantor. It can be concluded that literacy is a criterion for selecting credit applicants. However, the descriptive analyzes reveal that the highest access rate is observed in the category of literates (73.91%). The most important consideration here is to have a qualifier to have access credit. The basic qualifier for a credit applicant is to be literate. This implies a strong negotiating capacity and a spirit of discernment. For Eloundou et al. (2013), a high level of literacy is an asset for women who can play the role of leaders or leaders of groups and  even  act  as true intermediaries between the rural world and external partners. But illiteracy creates a dependency on others who may limit the potential power of action of an individual.

Rice as the main speculation in terms of income

The regression coefficient of the rice variable as the main income speculation is -5.38 with a probability of 0.001. This means that this variable negatively and significantly influences the possibility of having access to credit for rice production at 1% level. In addition, Table 3 shows that those who have rice as the main income speculation do not have access to credit (66.22%). This can be explained by the fact that the income from rice when it is taken as the main speculation is really considerable so that the farmer no longer needs to apply for credit. In other words, if the farmer produces his rice and has sufficient added value to meet the other expenses, he no longer needs to go to a financier to apply for credit. In this case, it can be self-financing. This is explained by the negative sign of this variable in the logit model.

Part of rice income in monthly income

The level of the part of income in monthly  income  has  a positive influence and is significant at the 1% level of access to credit for rice production. Thus, the part of rice income in the monthly income of the farmer increases the chances of having access to credit for rice production by 2.29 times with a probability of 0.002. The marginal effect estimated at -0.78 implies that an increase of 0.002 USD of income from rice will increase the probability of having access to credit for rice production of 0.78%. Thus, the probability of having access to credit is an increasing function of income from rice production.

When the farmer's income is growing or stable, the repayment of credit is guaranteed. Nowadays, microfinance institutions do not give credit to anyone and anyhow in Benin. The credit applicant must show a guarantee worthy of the name and validly represented.

Household size

The regression coefficient for the household size variable is -1.13 with a gain of 0.000. These results imply that the household size variable influences negatively and significantly the possibility of having access to credit for rice production at a 1% level. The marginal effect estimated at -0.106 implies that an increase of one unit of the producer's household size decreases the probability of having access to credit for rice production by 0.106%. In other words, it should be noted that the effect of household size has been anticipated to be negative whereas it is positive in reality. As a result, the effect of household size on productivity depends more on the quality and skills of household members than on the size of the household (Bamba et al., 2014). If they have a certain level of education and proven experience in rice production, it will help the head of the household to perform better. In many cases, the family workforce (which is the largest) is often made up of women and children who are not often experienced or have not attained a high level of education. These results confirm those of Fall (2009) who showed that size is a datum that informs both the level of family burden and the potential of agricultural labor available within a household. Thus, size acts differently depending on these two considerations. The first aspect justifies the search for higher incomes to meet the needs of the family and thus influences attempts to intensify production.

Eloundou et al. (2013) have shown that the importance of the number of people living in a household can be explained by two phenomena: age of union and early sexual intercourse in rural areas. Indeed, this trend is not limited only to parents and children, but also extends to cousins and grandparents. In their study, women with more than 8 people in their household are much more members belonging to a microcredit institution. Thus, this high representativeness of members can be attributed to the fact that households with more "mouths to feed" are forced to find sources of safe, available and continuous money loans for family members.

Rice farmers face several factors limiting their access to factors of production in general and specifically to financial services. The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze these factors. Literacy, the part of income from rice in the farmer's monthly income, rice as the main income speculation and household size can be considered as the main factors limiting rice farmer’s access to services of microfinance institutions in rural areas. For easy access of rice farmers to agricultural credit, this study recommends that actors adapt the service offer of microfinance to the socio-economic conditions of rice farmers in order to enable them to access credit and increase their rice production, which would help meet the demand for rice and, by extension, contribute to reducing food insecurity in Benin.

Whatever the scientific value given to this document, we must recognize that it has certain shortcomings. Indeed, most of the data used in this study come from field surveys. Given the imperative of time related to the requirements of the available financial means, all the producers of the municipality were not met. In addition, the data were collected by single passage where the respondents' memory is used. It should also be noted that the mistrust shown by some respondents in the provision of information has been a serious handicap for access to qualitative data and other quantitative data. However, the similarities, or even the repetitiveness of some information obtained from several respondents, make it possible to grant relative reliability to all of these collected data. Also, throughout the data collection phase, our constant concern has been to minimize, as much as possible, the gaps in reality. Despite these constraints in the field and these limits, the analysis of the data recorded throughout this study provides a better understanding of the functioning of the shrimp industry in Benin, through the value chain.

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests

The authors wish to thank the College of Agricultural Economics and Management; this research work is financially supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (NSFC No.71473100,71273103).