Extension workers’ perception of the Farmer Field School and Training and Visit system for transfer of agricultural technologies to farmers in South-west Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated the perception of agricultural extension personnel (AEP) towards Farmer Field School (FFS) and Training and Visit (T&V) system for the transfer of agricultural technologies to farmers in Southwest Nigeria. A two-stage sampling technique was used to select extension personnel form Agricultural Development Program (ADP). The first stage involves a random selection of three States from the six States in Southwest Nigeria namely; Lagos, Ogun and Oyo state ADPs, according to proportion. The second stage involved the purposive selection of 40% of AEP from each State making 153 AEP. Primary data were collected via the use of structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistical tools such as frequency counts, percentage and mean rank was used to analyse the data while inferential statistical tool such as chi-square was used to test the hypothesis. Results show that AEP had a mean age of 44.64 years, had spent more than 15 years (x̅ = 15.37) in service and one AEP cover almost 2,000 (x̅ = 1,901.19) households. On condition of service, AEP were not satisfied with the way their salaries were paid (x̅ = 1.49) and lack sufficient access to mobility (x̅ = 1.29). Although, AEP had both positively and negative perception towards FFS and T&V, the major problems identified were low extension-farmer ratio (x̅ = 2.18; x̅ = 1.78), non-conduciveness of training venues (x̅ = 2.94; x̅ = 1.93), to mention a few. Education was significantly (χ2 = 32.066, P = 0.006) related to perception for FFS. It is recommended that the government at both state and local government level employ more AEP to close the gap of low extension-farmer ratio and also provide them with incentives to make them more efficient. A combination of extension systems can be used by AEP to transfer agricultural technologies to farmers to increase agricultural production and income.