Ibadan – International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, (IITA) Ibadan, has identified the current farmer-extension worker of one extension worker to 3,011 farmers as a major constraint in extension system in Nigeria.
This is contained in a statement by the IITA Communication and Knowledge Exchange Expert, Mr Godwin Atser, made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Ibadan on Sunday.
“The ratio of one extension worker to over 3,000 farmers drastically falls short of the target of the Nigerian government to have one agricultural extension worker to 800 farmers.
“This poses a serious challenge to the agricultural transformation agenda of the government,”the statement said.
The statement noted that apart from the grossly inadequate number of extension workers, this study also indicated that the existing workers were large made of older people.
According to the statement, the extension workers are inefficient as a result of underfunding and lack of certain basic requirements to enhance their capacity development.
The study investigated the capabilities of extension staff of Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) in weed management and cassava systems in Nigeria.
It stated that the findings revealed that more than 80 per cent of extension staff has not had training specifically targeting weed management in cassava.
It pointed out that there is knowledge gap on weed identification, types of herbicides, cassava varietal identification, and computer skills among extension staff.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
The statement explained that the extension system is male dominated and that the majority are 50 years and above.
It, therefore, called for recruitment of young, educated and agile agricultural extension workers to ensure effective dissemination of information to farmers in the country.
“Radio, telephone and group discussion were the most used communication channels for technology transfer to farmers by extension staff,” the statement noted.
It recommended training and re-training of extension staff on sustainable management of weeds in cassava systems with specific emphasis on weed identification, herbicides use and application, cassava variety identification, gender and computer skills. (NAN)