ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effectiveness of Agricultural Development Programme in technology dissemination to farmers in Rivers State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of RISADEP farmers, ascertain farmers’ awareness of RISADEP technologies, assess the level of utilisation of Extension approaches in technology dissemination, assess the level at which technologies has been disseminated to tanners, ascertain farmers’ perception on disseminated technologies and determine the level of adoption. A multi-stage sampling techniques was used' to select a sample size of 120 RISADEP farmers from zone 1 and zone 3 of RISADEP for the study. Primary data were collected using questionnaire/structured interview and collected data were analysed using frequency, percentage and mean scores while hypotheses were tested using simple regression model. The study revealed that majority (93%-l 00%) of the farmers were aware of most of RISADEP technologies such as yam minisette, improved cassava varieties, goat/sheep confinement, dry season vegetable production, etc. although they were not aware of few technologies such as fish gear maintenance, snail farming and artificial brooding of local chicks. It further revealed high utilisation of extension approaches such as farm xisits/supervision, farmers training, organisation of workshops/farm show, etc by RISADEP with grand mean score (x = 3.10) though more work is expected to be done on establishment of Management Training Plots (MTPs) and few others. The extent of technology dissemination was revealed to be high with grand mean scoreJx = 3.55) while adoption level by farmers with grand mean score (r= 4.50) was adjudged to be high. However, technologies such as fish gear maintenance, snail farming and artificial brooding of local chicks were neither disseminated nor adopted with grand mean less than 2.0. The regression results indicated that the level of technology dissemination significantly affects farmers’ adoption level at 1% level of significance. It also showed that the level of utilisation of Extension Approach affects the level of adoption of selected technologies at 5% level of significance. High awareness and adoption by farmers can be attributed to high level of extension approach utilisation and level of dissemination of technologies by RISADEP hence the need to conclude that RISADEP has been effective in disseminating most of its technologies to farmers in Rivers State. It therefore recommended that extension staff should endeavour to create more awareness and improve on dissemination offish gear maintenance, snail farming and artificial brooding of local chicks since Rivers State terrain favours fish and livestock farming. Director of extension services should ensure compulsory establishment of Management Training Plots (MTPs) in all RISADEP circles with adequate monitoring to ensure staff compliance. Technology generation agencies should also provide cheap and affordable improved technologies to enable farmers with low financial strength to afford and adopt it.