ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to identify the managerial skills required by youths for sustainable rice production in Ebonyi State. Six purposes guided the study; six research questions and six hypotheses were answered and tested respectively at .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 39,103 which comprised 39,000 registered rice farmers and 103 extension agents. The total sample size for the study was 495. Taro Yameni’s formula was used to sample 392 rice farmers while all the 103 Extension Agents were used for the study. Stratified proportionate sampling technique was adopted to sample the 392 farmers across the State. A structured questionnaire developed from the literature reviewed was used for data collection. The questionnaire was divided into parts A-G.Part A sought information on the respondent’s relevant personal characteristics while parts B-G sought information in line with the purpose of study. Part B had 14 items, part C had 24 items, part D had 32 items, part E had 22 items, part F had 9 items and part G had 14 items making a total of 113 items. Each of Parts B-G had 4 response options of highly required (H.R)- 4 points, moderately required (M.R)-3 points, slightly required (S.R)-2 points and not required (N.R)- 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 0.91. 495 copies of the questionnaire were administered to the farmers and Extension Agents in the study area with the help of 3 research assistants. Out of the 495 copies, 485 were retrieved (97% return) and analyzed using mean, standard deviation for answering research questions and z-Test to test the null hypothesis. The study found out that the managerial skills required by the youths for sustainable rice production in Ebonyi State are: 14 items in planning; 23 items in nursery preparation; 30 items in field operations management; 19 items in processing, 9 items in storage and 14 items in marketing. It was also found that there was no significant difference between the mean responses of the farmers and extension agents on the six hypotheses tested on the managerial skills required for sustainable rice production. The study concluded that the findings were the basic skills required by the youths in sustainable rice production. Among the recommendations made were that vocational skill acquisition centres should be established by the State government and the items used to form a module for training the youths in sustainable rice production.