Effects of Agricultural Extension Services on the Performance of Members of Women Agricultural Cooperatives in South East, Nigeria

This study dwelt on Effects of Agricultural Extension Services on the Performance of Members of Women Agricultural Cooperatives in Southeast Nigeria. Nigerian agricultural system has not been living up to expectation, despite the wide range of programmes, policies and approaches that have been formulated for its enhancement and sustenance. Multistage random sampling technique was adopted to select 399 respondents of the women agricultural cooperative members. Primary data was sourced through the use of structured questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed with both descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of SPSS version 23 and strata 14 software. The descriptive statistics used include frequency distribution table, simple percentages, weighted mean and mean threshold of five point likert scale measure while inferential statistics used include regression, and ANOVA, which were used for the test of hypotheses formulated. The result of hypothesis one revealed that the socioeconomic characteristics of the members of the women agricultural cooperative have significant influence on the use of extension services with Age 2.07 ,level of education 3.39 ,main occupation 2.46 and income 3.25.Hypotheses 2 and 3 also revealed that the level of use of agricultural extension services have significant effect on the women's income and output performance indices with F statistics value of 107.42 ,72.11 and r 0.4622,0.3658 respectively. It is recommended that women farmers need education and training for better understanding of extension services and programmes which will provide assistance to them, for improved agricultural production. Women agricultural cooperative members need training on financial inclusion that they can use all available sources of credit for enhancement of agricultural activities and this will boost food security in the Southeast and Nigeria in general. Okafor I. P. | Umebali E. E "Effects of Agricultural Extension Services on the Performance of Members of Women Agricultural Cooperatives in South East, Nigeria" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-4 | Issue-1 , December 2019, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd29544.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/engineering/agricultural-engineering/29544/effects-of-agricultural-extension-services-on-the-performance-of-members-of-women-agricultural-cooperatives-in-south-east-nigeria/okafor-i-p