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June 11th, 2020

Exploring the effectiveness of agricultural technologies training among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan African communities

Published by European Journal of Training and Development Studies,

This study (PDF) in the European Journal of Training and Development Studies was carried out to ascertain the effectiveness of agricultural technologies training among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan African communities. Knowledge and capacity development on improved farm technologies and techniques are essential for agricultural growth. Despite the extension effort to facilitate adoption and diffusion of innovation through farmers visit and training, there is the need to evaluate the effectiveness of farmers’ engagement in technologies development. This study was carried out to ascertain the effectiveness of agricultural technologies training among 200 smallholder farmers in Nigeria. The results of the study revealed that agricultural technologies training were very effective among the smallholder farmers. A great proportion (70.5%) of the farmers indicated that the training was very effective. There was a rapid increase (85%) in the level of adoption of agricultural technologies after the participatory training among the respondents compared to pre-training (49.5%). The findings also revealed that 13 Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) technologies were fully adopted by the majority of the smallholder farmers. In addition, our results also showed that there was a strong positive correlation between agricultural technologies training sessions and adoption of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs). The results reported that the use of participatory agricultural technologies training and trust in the lead farmers influenced farmers’ decisions to adopt and implement the recommended good agricultural practices technologies.  The use of information and participatory technologies training offered to the smallholders was largely an educational process which they converted into useable knowledge. The study recommends a policy agenda of governments that will favor improvement of agricultural extension and training for rural development to promote agricultural productivity, improving standard of living of  smallholder farmers and national food security. Furthermore, there is need for stable political environment that will generate a forwardlooking policy in the agricultural sector.

Curated from eajournals.org