Farmers attitude towards commercialized extension system in Delta State, Nigeria

Abstract

The need for an alternative extension service becomes very crucial when the public extension system has not yielded good result. The study therefore investigated farmers’ attitude towards commercialized extension system and willingness to pay for extension services. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted in the selection of 240 respondents. Frequency count, mean and percentage were used for data analysis while Correlation and Cochran test were used to test the hypotheses. Result revealed the respondents were fairly young (mean age was 46-years), majorly male (67.9%), married (67.9%), educated (99.2%) and experienced (19 years), had a family size of 6 persons and earned a mean annual income of ₦ 54,604.17. On the farmers attitude towards commercialized extension system, the farmers agreed that the commercialized extension system will be more timely in their delivery (mean=3.38), that payment pay for extension services is necessary for higher farm productivity (mean=3.35), that extension workers will be more effective under the system (mean=3.35), and that farmers stand to benefit more from this system in terms of income (mean=3.12), The farmers were willing to pay for improved planting materials (80%), linkage to farm input supplies (65%) and markets (64.2%). The study concludes that the respondents were positively disposed to commercialized extension service in arable crop production. It was recommended that commercial extension service providers should extend their services to the study area.