Abstract
Agriculture has become the bedrock of some growing economy in the world but the discovery of crude oil and other resources in a developing country like Nigeria has led to the extreme decline in the practice. Many youths now have either low or no interested in agriculture and the majority of the people that are actively practicing are the older generation.
 This study revisits the impact of education on students interest in agriculture as a professional career. The study was carried out in an agriculture-based uni-versity with a state of the art equipment. Our findings show that 64% of agricul-ture students who participated in this survey are willing to pursue agriculture-related careers. Likewise, there is a significant relationship between the student’s gender and farm ownership, with 84% of male students likelier to own farms. Also, our results have shown that students in higher levels have more interests in agriculture compared to students at lower levels and this invariably increases the possibilities of their pursuing agriculture-related careers or businesses.
Highlights
Nigeria is located in West Africa with a land mass of 923,768 sq.km measuring about 1,200 km from east to west and 1,050 km from north to south [1]
The agricultural sector can be a major contributor to the economic development of a nation and there is a need to attract the young generation through modern education to see the need for agricultural practices
We carried out a survey to evaluate the impact of agricultural education on students of agriculture-related courses at Landmark University
Summary
Nigeria is located in West Africa with a land mass of 923,768 sq.km measuring about 1,200 km from east to west and 1,050 km from north to south [1]. Its economic growth relies heavily on oil as its main source of foreign exchange earnings and agriculture, as the country is endowed with a variety of vegetation and large farmlands with suitable agro-climatological conditions for crop cultivation and livestock rearing [3,4,5]. Many low middle-income countries such as Nigeria, rely on the agricultural sector to provide employment opportunities, food supply and foreign exchange with the exportation of such goods, contributing positively to their economic growth [6]. Several studies have tried to determine the effect of the agricultural sector on Nigeria's economic growth. Most studies found that agriculture has contributed positively to the economic growth of Nigeria [7], while others have found negative effects [8]. 63% of Nigeria's GDP was accounted for by the agricultural sector; there was a massive decline in agricultural practices due to the discovery of iJET ‒ Vol 15, No 3, 2020
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