Agricultural Information Utilization Pattern Among Rural Women Farmers: A Community Level Study in Ebonyi State, Nigeria (Published)
This study was to investigate the pattern of agricultural information utilization among the rural women farmers in Effium community of Ebony State. Three research questions and null hypothesis were developed to guide the study. A structured questionnaire was also developed, validated and used for eliciting information from 540 rural women farmers. Data were analyzed with mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions; and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. From the findings, rural women farmers are mostly within middle age for active use of agricultural information; but have small farm holdings, and depend to great extent on inter-personal communication for agricultural information. The findings also revealed that most of rural women farmers have low education. The respondents agreed that women farmers use information on fertilizer, herbicides, improved seeds, labour sources and market locations. But, women rarely use information on livestock management, record keeping, farm planning, sources of credit and farm mechanization. It was then-recommended that government should deploy extension agents into rural areas to educate farmers on the need and how to use new agricultural information technologies. Again farmers should be encouraged to form co-operative societies to enable them secure greater inputs to improve their income.
Keywords: Ebonyi State, Nigeria, agricultural information utilization pattern, community level study, rural women farmers