ARABLE CROP FARMERS’ PERCEPTION OF ORGANIC FARMING PRACTICES IN EKITI STATE

This study assessed the arable crop farmers’ perception of organic farming practices in Ekiti state, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to: describe the socio-economic characteristics of arable crop farmers; examine the level of awareness of organic farming practices by farmers; examine the level of usage of organic farming practices among arable crop farmers; evaluate the perception of farmers towards organic farming practices and to describe the constraints of organic farming practices. Interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents.A multistage sampling technique was used, in the first stage Ido, Ikole, Oye and Ado Local Government Area of Ekiti state were randomly selected, the second stage involved the selection of two communities from each Local Government Area, making eight selected communities, in the third stage there was selection of ten trained arable farmers from each selected community, a total of eighty respondents were interviewed. The result of the study shows that age distribution of the respondents was found at the modal category of 41-50 years. Male respondents were dominant (86.3%). The study revealed that majority of them were married. Majority of the respondents (57.5%) had secondary school completed. Farmers were aware of the organic farming practices except for zero/controlled burning with low mean score (x=1.51). The result revealed that manual weeding (87.5%), mulching (85.0%) and legumes/cover crops (85.0%) all ranked high in the level of organic farming usage. The study reveals that farmers have more positive perception towards organic farming practices. Major constraints to organic farming practices includes; lack of financial support and time-consuming nature of organic farming. There was significant relationship between the level of usage of organic practices and the perception of farmers towards organic farming practices at P-value of 0.033. The study concludes that there is high level of awareness, usage and perception among the farmers and the major constraint is inadequate finance. Since farmers have positive perception towards organic farming, there should be proper financial support in form of loan to motivate them. There should also be development of a strong domestic market for organic foods, to protect the interest of these organic farmers. Keywords: arable crop farmers, perception, organic farming, JDP