ABSTRACT

The study focused on identifying the entrepreneurial competency improvement needs of farmer in pig production for sustainable food security in Abia State. The area of the study was Abia State focus on pig farmers improvement needs in Abia State. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The study had six specific purposes which are formulated to guide the study housing management, breeding of pig, rearing management health management, processing and market of pig and pork for sustainable food security. In line with the 6 purposes and six hypotheses were answered and tested respectively for the study. The population of the study was 350 respondent made up 250 agricultural extension agents and 100 registered pig farmers operating from the agricultural development programme (ADP) the instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled pig farmers entrepreneurial competency improvement needs questionnaire (PFECINQ) containing 64 items. The questionnaire was structured in a 4 point scale of highly needed, needed, Average, needed and Not Needed while High performance, Average performance, low performance and Not performance with a scale of 4,3,2 and I respectively. The instrument was validated by 3 validates while Cronbach alpha coefficient which was used to test the reliability and a reliability of .88 was obtained indicating that the instrument is highly reliable for the study. Data were collected with the help of structural questionnaire. The copies of the instrument were retrieved analyzed using mean and standard deviation for research questions and t-test for testing the null hypotheses. It was found from the results of the analyzes that there are 15 competencies in housing management, 9 competencies in breeding of pig, 11 competencies in rearing of pig, 5 competencies in health management of pig. 9 competencies in processing and 9 competencies in marketing of pig and pork were required by pig farmers for improved in pig industries. It was also found that there was no significant differences in all the hypotheses tested between the mean responds of pig farmers and agricultural extension agents. The study concluded that the 64 items are the competencies required by pig farmers to improved in pig industries of Abia State and also revealed amongst other that there some competencies that do not need to improved. Based on the findings four recommendations were made that the government of Abia State should provide adequate structures to pig fanners involved in pig production to encourage them in the enterprise. The agricultural extension agents of Abia State should do all within their reach to educate local pig farmers on the various needed competency area in pig production, monitor their activities from planning till marketing of their produce and ensure that all farm inputs provided by the government gets to them on time.