INVOLVEMENT OF YOUTH IN COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (YCAD): PANACEA TO AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION EFFECTIVENESS DURING EMERGENCIES IN AGRICsLTURAL COMMODITIES IN EKITI-STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Over time, the government of Nigeria has embarked on various development programmes to improve the standard of living of the youths. Unfortunately, those programmes do fail. This study however, investigates to know what could be responsible for development programmes’ failure over time. The study specifically determined the level of involvement of youths in commercial agriculture and assessed the level of effectiveness of YCAD programme in the State. The programme trained their beneficiaries in four main agricultural enterprises (Arable crop, Poultry, Fisheries & Tree crops). Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 174 beneficiaries/respondents for the study. A validated interview schedule was used to collect data which were summarized with percentages, means and standard deviation while chi-square, correlation and Analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to draw inferences. Results showed that the mean age of respondents was 37±5years, mean household size was 5±2 persons, mean year of formal education was 15±2 years and mean monthly income was ₦41,000±23,000. Results show that arable crop enterprises (47.7%) and poultry (27%) were the most preferred enterprises by the beneficiaries in the study area followed by tree crops enterprise (12.6%) and fisheries (12.6%) respectively. Results also showed that 68.7percent of the respondents indicated moderate level of involvement in Arable crop enterprise activities; 46.8percent indicated high level of involvement in poultry enterprise activities, 100percent indicated high level of involvement in tree crops and 95.5percent indicated high level of involvement in fisheries enterprise activities respectively. However, in the overall level of involvement of beneficiaries in YCAD activities, Results showed that half (50%) of the respondents indicated Moderate level of involvement. Further results show that the YCAD programme was highly effective among majority (69.5%) of the respondents. In addition, There was positive and significant relationship between the involvement in enterprise activities and effectiveness of the programme (r = 0.451; p ≤ 0.01), also, there was significance difference in the effectiveness of the programme across the four enterprises (F-value =16.374; p ≤ 0.01). This implies that the level of involvement in development programmes activities will influence its effectiveness. From this study, it was concluded that the level of involvement of the beneficiaries in various activities of YCAD programme influences its effectiveness.