Perception of Farming Households towards Agricultural Information Dissemination by Mass Media Channels in Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

The knowledge of the perception of farmers towards agricultural information being disseminated by the media is necessary if agricultural information will be harnessed maximally by farmers. This study was carried out to assess the perception of farming households towards the effectiveness of agricultural information dissemination by mass media channels Southwest, Nigeria. A multistage random sampling procedure was used to select 180 farming households. Data were collected using a well-structured interview schedule. Frequency counts, percentages and mean were used to analyze data collected. The study revealed that 68.9% of the respondents were between the age of 41 years and 60 years, 62.2% of the farmers were male while 37.8 % were female. Respondents who acquired primary school education were 51.7%. A majority of the respondents (80%) have household size between 5 and 10. Furthermore, the study revealed that Radio was the most preferred channel of agricultural information retrieval (86.7%), the next preferred was television (10.0%), while the least was newspaper (3.3%). Nine (9) out of 12 (twelve) perception variables were relevant to the effectiveness of agricultural information dissemination. The study recommends that farmers should be involved in the creation and dissemination process for effective agricultural information.