Assessment of small-scale farmers willingness to participate in receiving new agricultural information in Paikoro Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria.

Abstract

The study assessed small-scale farmers’ willingness to participate in receiving new agricultural information in Niger State. It aims at identifying the level of participation of small-scale farmers and their attitudes toward receiving new agricultural information in the study area. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 86 respondents who were interviewed with structured questionnaire to obtained primary data. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Findings of the study revealed that the mean age of respondents were 36 years, which implied that they were young and agile for agricultural production. Majority (89.4%) of the respondents were married, 70.9% had primary education, and household size was 1-5 people. Respondents had high level of willingness to participate in receiving information on eradication of pests and diseases (M=4.24), vaccination of livestock (3.78) and agro chemical application (M=3.70) which ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. Some of the constraints encountered by the respondents, and their mean scores were inadequate number of Extension agents (M=4.61), poor infrastructural facilities (M=4.50) and high cost of extension service delivery (M=3.79). The chi-square result of the hypothesis’ testing revealed that education and income had significant relationship with respondent’s willingness to participate in receiving new agricultural information. It was therefore recommended that more Extension Agents should be posted to the study area in order to have a greater coverage of farmers, especially in the area