Abstract:
Many factors have been found to affect farmers’ adoption of new technologies by
different authors, which include extension contact and socio-economic characteristics
of farmers. The study therefore assessed the influence of extension contact and farmers’
socio-economic characteristics on adoption of oil palm technologies in Aniocha North
local government area of Delta State, Nigeria. With the assistance of the extension
agents and contact farmers, a two–stage random sampling technique was used for the
random selection of one hundred (100) respondents for the study. Findings show that
majority of the respondents were males (74.0%). About 70% of the respondents
were within the age bracket of 20-50 years with a majority (85%) having nonformal,
primary and secondary education qualifications. Most of the respondents
(92%) were small scale farmers having farm sizes ranging from 1-5 hectares
with more than 16 years of farming experience (60%). About 53% of the
respondents had contact with extension agents and the contact was mostly on
monthly basis, which respondents felt was not effective. Majority of the respondents
were not aware of some of the major oil palm technologies which probably lead to nonadoption
of most of these major technologies. The perceived major constraints for the
adoption of the major oil palm technologies were inadequate information (M = 4.77),
capital (M=4.77), high cost of input (M=4.49), and irregular extension contact (M =
4.56). The regression analysis shows that respondents’ years of farming experience
(b = 2.786), farm size (b = 1.879) and frequency of extension agents’ contact with
respondents (b = 2.534) had significant association with adoption of technologies. The
study recommended the assistance to farmers by subsidizing farm inputs and increase
the number of extension agents.
