Utilization of Agro-meteorological Services among Arable Crop Farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed arable crop farmers’ utilization of agro-meteorological services in Oyo State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed for this study. Oyo State was stratified into rainforest and savannah. One local government each was randomly selected from each of the vegetation zones, which were Iddo and Ogbomoso north. List of arable crop farmers was obtained from the selected LGAs from where 02% and 03% of the population were randomly selected to give a total sample size of 167 respondents. Data were presented with descriptive and analysed inferential statistical tools: Chi-square and PPMC. The results reveal that the majority of respondents were males (83.6%), Christians (62.5%) and had formal education (79.0%). About 36.2% were between 50 and 59 years and 65.8% had a farm size of 1-5 acres. Maize and cassava were the most cultivated crops, Oyo State Agricultural Development Programme (OYSADEP) was the only communication channel used. More than half (66.4%) of the farmers were aware of seasonal rainfall prediction, untimely access to information was the most severe constraint (1.23) and the used of agro-meteorological service was slightly above average (54.6%). Farm size (r=0.162) and family size (r=0.309: p≤0.05) were significantly related to utilization of agro-meteorological services. The scale of agro-meteorological service utilisation requires deliberate agro-meteorological extension education services and timely delivery of agro-meteorological information to farmers.

Keywords: Agro-meteorological services, meteorological information utilization, Arable crop farmers