FARMERS ASSESSMENT OF EXTENSION SERVICES DELIVERY IN BAUCHI STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined farmers’ assessment of extension services delivery in Bauchi State Nigeria. A multi-stage random sampling techniques was used in selecting 200 farmers from the three agricultural zones of the State. Data were collected through the administration of structured questionnaires and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that majority (84.5 %) of the farmers were male with mean age of 42 years. Also majority (75%) were married with household size mean of 8 persons. Similarly, 38 % had farming experience of 6- 10 years with mean land size of 1.5 hectares. More than half (58%) of the farmers belongs to farmers cooperatives with 26% having monthly extension contact. Similarly, 78% of the farmers received technology under crop and farming sub sector while 88.5% sourced information on extension services delivery from radio. The logistics regression shows that annual income and access to extension were significant at (P<0.01), while extension contact was significant at (P<0.05) in influencing farmers assessment of extension services delivery. The major constraint to extension services delivery were inadequate transportation/mobility of extension workers, inadequate equipment/teaching material and poor extension agent farmer ratio. It was concluded that the key factors influencing farmer’s assessment of extension services delivery in the study area were annual income, access to extension and number of extension contact. Based on the constraint highlighted the study recommended that extension agents should be provided with adequate mobility and incentives for easy access to the farmers, more extension workers need to be hired in order to significantly address the issue of poor ratio of extension agents to farming households.