ACCESSIBILITY OF ARABLE CROP FARMERS TO AGRICULTURAL INFORMATION IN EDO STATE.

ABSTRACT

This study examined the accessibility of arable crop farmers to agricultural information in Edo State.

A total of 180 farmers from six randomly selected communities were used for the study. Data were collected with structured questionnaire and analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results show that most farmers were married (65.5%) majority (73.2%) were between 30 – 50 years. More than half (50.7%) had secondary and tertiary education and majority (77.1%) had access to cultivable land of between 0.5 – 2.0ha. A large proportion of the farmers have access to information for all agricultural technologies from fellow farmers preferring radio as channel of information ( = 2.33). Finding further show that farmers accessibility to agricultural technologies was generally low with the highest mean score of 2.43 and low adoption of agricultural technologies (54.9%). Low farm income (  = 3.29), ignorance of where to seek agricultural information (  = 3.27) and low level of education (  = 3.25) were found to be the major significant factors affecting farmers acquisition of agricultural information. Major factors contributing to non-utilization of agricultural information were irregular visit of extension agents (=3.63), untimely message ( =3.62) and difficulties in understanding the information ( =3.34). However, increased yields (X=2.34), increased income (=2.20) and proper use of improved varieties (=2.18) were found to be the major benefits derived from the use of agricultural information. Hypotheses testing of relationship showed that respondents education (r=0.037) sex (x²= 0.488), marital status (x² = 0.352) farm size (r = 0.034), age (r = -0.198) had no significant relationship with farmers accessibility to agricultural information while income (r=0.145*) and adoption of technologies (r = 0.191*) had significant relationship with farmers accessibility to agricultural information. The study recommends the recruitment of more extension agents, the integration of farmers associations/cooperatives into the information dissemination system. Furthermore, agricultural messages should be simple and clear to understand by farmers and the need for radio and television stations to create more slots for agricultural programmes.