ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to identify the agricultural resource management competencies required for improving farmers’ productivity in Akwa Ibom State. Five purposes guided the study; five research questions answered and five hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. Related literature was reviewed under conceptual, theoretical, empirical framework and summary of reviewed related literature. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 708 which comprised 332 registered farmers, 307 teachers of agriculture and 69 extension agents. Stratified disproportionate sampling technique was adopted for the random sampling of 91 farmers and 96 teachers of agriculture while all the 69 extension agents were used. A structured questionnaire developed from the literature reviewed was used for data collection. The questionnaire was divided into two parts A and B. Part A sought information on the respondent’s relevant personal characteristics while parts B sought information in line with the purpose of study. Part B was further subdivided into 5 clusters, cluster 1 had 30 items, cluster 2 had 20 items, cluster 3 had 9 items, cluster 4 had 9 items and cluster 5 had 14 items. Each of the cluster 1-4 had 4 response options of strongly agreed (S.A)- 4 points, Agreed (A) -3 points, Disagreed (D)-2 points and strongly disagreed (D)- 1 point. The questionnaire was face validated by 3 validates in the field of Agricultural Education while Cronbach alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of 0.92, 0.90, 0.89 and 0.88 respectively on the five clusters.  Copies of the questionnaire were administered to the farmers, Extension Agents and Teachers of Agriculture in the study area with the help of 3 research assistants. Out of the 256 copies, 247 were retrieved (97% return) and analyzed using mean and standard deviation for answering research questions and analysis of variance to test the null hypotheses. The study found out that the resource competencies required for improving farmers’ productivity for food security in Akwa Ibom State are: 29 items in crop husbandry; 20 items in animal husbandry; 9 items in soil fertility maintenance; and 13 items in marketin g of agricultural products. It was also found that there were no significant differences between the mean responses of the farmers, extension agents and teachers of agriculture on the four hypotheses tested on resource competencies required for improving farmers’ productivity for food security in Akwa Ibom State. The study concluded that the findings were the competencies required for improving farmers’ productivity for food security. Among the recommendations made were that vocational competencies acquisition centres should be established by the State government and the items used to form a module for training the farmers for improving farmers’ productivity.