ATTITUDE OF WOMEN COCOA FARMERS TOWARD AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICES IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

The study examined attitude of cocoa women farmers in Ondo Sate Nigeria towards agricultural extension services. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 60 respondents, from which information were solicited, using a well-structured questionnaire. The study was purposely carried out in the state being the highest cocoa producing area in Nigeria while three highest cocoa producing LGA were purposively selected. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the two highest cocoa producing communities in each LGA. Snowball techniques were used to select 10 women cocoa farmers per community, to give sample size of 60 respondents. The results showed that the mean age of the respondents was 43.29 ±11.04 and majority (78%) were married. The main primary occupation was farming (60%) Respondents while 62.78% of the respondents completed both primary and secondary school. Majority of the respondents (81.67%) were aware of the agricultural extension services. Eight major constraints debarring cocoa women farmers’ participation in extension services were identified, amongst which were finance where all respondents (100%) attested as the major challenge, gender inequality (98.30%) and lack of collateral (75%). About 68 % of the respondents had medium attitude towards the extension services in the study area. Furthermore, there were negative and significant relationship between women cocoa farmers’ attitude and the agricultural extension services programme, on distribution of improved cocoa pods (r = -0.5; p< 0.01), loan and credit facilities (r = -0.346; p= 0.01) and market channel ((r = -0.318; p<0.01). It was recommended that government should provide equal opportunity on training for both genders, this will encourage women cocoa farmers to participate in extension programmes such that their farming needs will be met.