Skills Needed by Agricultural Education Students for Sustainable Vegetable Production in Enugu State (Published)
The main purpose of the study was to determine the skills needed by agricultural education students for sustainable vegetable production in Enugu State. The study was guided by five research questions and five null hypotheses. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study was 96 comprising of 33 extension agents and 63 registered vegetable farmers in Enugu State. The instrument used for data collection was a 42 item structural questionnaire grouped into five sections. The instrument was validated by three experts and reliability of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha Statistics which yielded 0.79. Out of 96 copies of the questionnaire distributed 89 were properly filled and returned representing 92.71% return rate. Mean, standard deviation and t-test statistics were the statistical tools used. From the result of data analysed, the study identified the pre-planting skills, planting, post planting skills, harvesting skills and marketing skills required by agricultural education students for sustainable vegetable production in Enugu State. The findings of the study showed that there is no significant difference between mean responses of extension agents and vegetable farmers on the identified skills. Based on the findings, recommendations were made which include that the lecturers of agricultural education programme should ensure that the identified are skills used in teaching the students in crop production course of study and the government should ensure that the skills required for vegetable production are incorporated in the quality training and retraining of the students.
Keywords: Skills, agricultural education, sustainable vegetable production, vegetable