Awareness and Uptake of The National Farm Inputs and Food Production Policy among Arable Crop Farmers in Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

Many of the agricultural policies of the government have fallen short of the ends they were set up to attain, given that many of the policies were either not up-taken or their uptakes were relatively slow to match the rate of population growth and the consequential increase in food demand. Awareness and uptake of agricultural policy among arable crop farmers in Ogun state was therefore investigated.A total
of 120 arable crop farmers were surveyed. Data were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages and mean. Majority (83.3%) were male while 60.8% had primary education and 9.2% had no formal education. Majority (75%) were aware of farm inputs policy of the government. While uptake of policies on credit facilities (89.2%) and farm machineries (79.2%) was low, it was low for uptake of extension
services (73.3%), agrochemicals (66.7%) and improved seeds (65.8%) was high. Important constraints to the uptake of agricultural policies were inadequate funds, stiff bureaucracy of the government and inconsistent government policies. Respondents location (?2 = 4.837) and membership of group (?2 = 4.174) were significantly related to uptake of farm and inputs production policy of the government. There is high level of awareness but low uptake of farm input and food production policy of the government among arable farmers in the study area. Government should therefore provide adequate subsidy on production inputs and removal of bureaucratic procedures so as to ensure a better uptake of her agricultural policies.