Impact of farmers’ field school on cocoa productivity in Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examines the impact of Farmers’ field school on cocoa productivity in Ondo States Nigeria. By means of a well  structured and validated questionnaire,  data were collected from 90 FFS farmers  and non-FFS farmers. Data collected were  analysed using descriptive statistics, Probit  regression and endogenous switching  regression method. The results reveal that  the selection model for Cocoa farmers in  Ondo State, shows that the only significant  determinant in FFS participations was age  and significant at 1% level. In addition, only  gender was correlated positively with the FFS participation probability. It should  however be noted that FFS participation  probability negatively correlated with extension, education and age. Farmers’  field school had significant impact on the  productivity of cocoa farming in the study  area. It is recommended that government  should put more effort on ways to attract  and encourage young people who are agile  and aggressive in  farming business, cocoa  farmers should be  encourage in starting  the cultivation of new cocoa plantation in  order to increase their  productivity. Cocoa farmers should be  encouraged to participate in FFS in order to  ameliorate the effect of low level education  as training and retraining of cocoa farmers  with innovations, knowledge and modern  day techniques. Participation in FFS  increased farmers’ productivity significantly  by 80.93% at 5% level of  significance when compared to the causal  effects of Non-FFS participant in the study  area. Government should provide land for  young farmer entrants to cultivate new  cocoa plantation to increase productivity.