Factors Influencing Cooperative Members’ Access to Extension Services on Root and Tuber Crops Production in South-East, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed factors influencing cooperative members’ access to extension services on root and tuber crops production in South-East, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling method was used to select a total of 120 youths and women. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. The descriptive statistics used were frequency count, percentages and mean, while the inferential statistic used was Ordinary Least Square Regression Model (OLS). Result showed that average percentage (58.33%) of the cooperative members were females, the majority (73.33%) of the respondents were married. Good percentage (60.00%) of the cooperative members had farm size that fell between 0.1-1ha, and (61.67%) of them indicated that they had no access to extension services. The results showed that all (100%) of the farmers cultivated cassava. The grand mean was 3.27 on a five point rating scale, indicated that the cooperative members had constraints in accessing extension service delivery. The result of regression analysis revealed that some of the socioeconomic variables were significant at 1% and 5% levels with coefficient values of age (2.30**), sex (2.35**), education level (2.38**), household size (2.68**) and access to credit (7.80***) respectively. The study concluded that some socioeconomic factors influenced cooperative members’ access to extension services on root and tuber crops production, namely sex, age, education, household size and access to credit. The major constraining factors to access to extension services were low extension farmer ratio, distance from farm to extension office, access to credit, insecurity, poor network of communication, cultural barriers among others. It is therefore, recommended that more extension agents be employed and deploy to various communities to enable them reach out to cooperative farmers in the area since low extension farmer ratio is the major constraint indicated by farmers in the study.