Farmers’ willingness to use one-stop agricultural extension services support centre in Oyo State Nigeria

Abstract

Owing to the complexities associated with accessing inputs, requisite information and other ancillary services by farmers, one stop agricultural extension service support centre was launched by the Federal Government. In anticipation of its take-off in Oyo state, this study assessed farmers’ willingness to use the services offered by the support centre. Deploying multistage sampling procedure, a total of 123 farmers were sampled to elicit data. Majority of the sample subjects were male (65.8%), married (87.0%) and had an average age, household size and net monthly income of 42.01±12.01years, 5.75±2.07persons and ?41,219.51k±?37,063.14k, respectively. Farming experience and farm size were 7.48±5.17 years and 6.19±10.71acres, respectively. Mechanization service (x?=2.10) and market information service (x?=1.99) were preferred most among the proposed services in
the centre. Practicability of services offered (x?=1.89) and inability to appropriately communicate information in the service package ranked highest as anticipated constraints to effectively accessing proposed services. Willingness to use these services was high (76.0%) with market information services ranking highest (x?=2.07). The study established relationship between marital status (?2=160.157), farming experience (r= 0.018), farm size (r= 0.351), farmers preference’ (r=0.766), anticipated constraints (r=0.617) and farmers’ willingness to use onestop agricultural extension services support centre. From the foregoing, it is recommended that the proposed project be upheld, however, mechanization and market information services be given priority to ensure that its overall objective and deliverables have far-reaching effect.