In order to determine the capacity building needs of farmers for safe agro-chemical use in Niger State, the study examined awareness of safety measures for agrochemical usage, sources of awareness, practice of safety measures and training needs of farmers. One hundred and twenty farmers were randomly selected from three local government areas in the state. Validated interview schedule with reliability coefficient of 0.89 was used to collect data. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. All the respondents were aware of wearing of protective clothing and avoiding drinking/eating during spraying, safety measure such as avoiding off label use (7.50%) had low awareness level. The major sources of awareness were friend/relatives (55.00%). The most widely practised safety measure was avoiding ingesting or inhaling chemicals (91.67%), while the least practised safety measure was avoiding off label use (2.50%).Reasons given for not practicing some safety measures include heaviness of protective clothing (17.50%) and unreadable nature of instruction labels (14.17%). Major areas of training needs of the respondents were application (61.67%) and handling (52.50%) of agro-chemicals. A positive significant correlation existed between education (r = 0.461), farming experience (r = 0.337), farm income (r = 0.307) and practice of safety measures. It was therefore recommended that enlightenment campaign should be carried out in the State to raise awareness level for safe use of agro-chemicals in the agricultural transformation programme, while the characters of the instruction labels should be boldly written to facilitate reading and practice of safety measures.
The study investigated the information and training sources used by rice farmers in North central, Nigeria. A total of 320 respondents were selected and interviewed using structured interview schedule. The respondents were of two categories, the participants and non-participants of the intervention programme. The data were analyzed using frequency, percentages, mean, ranking and chi square. Majority (80.6%) of the non-participants had been cultivating rice for more than 20 years and it was only few (10%) of the participants that had been cultivating rice for more than 20 years, majority (91.3%) of the participants had above 2.5 ha and only about 33.1% of the non-participants had rice farm size above 2.5 ha. Many of the non-participants (57.5%) had up to 3 different plots of rice farm, while the majority of the participants (51.3%) had up to 2 different plots for rice farming. Non-participants and participants claimed that other farmers (93.1%) and USAID/Market field officers (100%) respectively were their main sources of information. Training perception indicates that selection of high yielding varieties with the mean score of 3.95 ranked 1 st , selection of healthy seeds with a mean score of 3.92 ranked 2 nd and fertilizer use ranked 3 rd as the most relevant improved technologies on which training was received. The study also reveals that training was positively associated with adoption, the result of the paired mean difference between the output (35.863) and income (149113.8) of participants and non-participants showed clearly significant mean deference. Implying that training and adoption of improved rice package had a positive and significant effect on output and income. It was recommended that frequent training of the rice farmers in the study area should be given topmost priority so that the farmers can obtain adequate information and, consequently, obtain optimum yield from the adoption of improved rice packages.
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