Ensuring Household Food Security through Arable Crop Farmers Participation in Farmers Field School as an Extension Approach: An Empirical Evidence from Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Due to inadequacy of Training & Visit extension approach used by Agricultural Development Programme (ADP), the government introduced another extension approach called Farmer Field School (FFS) to fill up the gap left by T&V. The study determined the effect of FFS on arable crops production in Osun State, Nigeria. Four Local Government Areas were purposively selected based on their participation in FFS. Structured interview schedule duelly validated and pretested was used for data collection. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the data analysis. The study revealed that farmers participated in trainings and other capacity building activities that were carried out in the school. It also revealed that almost all the respondents indicated the usefulness of FFS and that it has contributed to increase in their farm income and productivity. The major challenges which militated against effective and efficient operations of FFS were inadequate agricultural credit and non-availability of farm inputs. Correlation analysis showed that there were positive and significant relationship between the farm size, number of people assisting on the farm and effect of FFS. Education had positive and no significant relationship with the effect of the FFS. There was significant difference between the technical efficiency of respondents before and after joining FFS. Their technical efficiency increased after the training in FFS. It is recommended that the farmers should be provided with agricultural credit in cash and kind so as to boost their agricultural production and this should be done on time through proper channel for effective distribution.