Skills Required By Women In Agriculture (Wia) For Marketing Of Oil Palm Produce In Abia State, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

 This study was carried out to identify the skills required by women in Agriculture (WIA) for marketing of palm produce in Abia State, Nigeria. The study was guided by five research questions and five hypotheses. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. the population of the study were 1321 which consists of 1201 palm produce marketers and 120 extension agents. The sample size of the study was 266 which consists of 210 palm produce marketers and 56 extension derived using multistage sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was the use of questionnaire. The instrument was face validated by two experts from the Department of Agricultural/Home Science Education and one expert from Measurement and Evaluation unit of Science Education Department. The reliability of the instrument was 0.73 which was computed using Cronbach's Alpha method. The method of data collection was through the administration of 266 copies of the questionnaires to the respondents and 265 copies were retrieved completely filled Mean and standard deviation were used to answer research questions while t-test statistic was used to tests the five hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that all the identified skills were required by Women in Agriculture for marketing of palm produce in Abia State, Based on the findings, it was recommended that: the skills should be developed into a training manual and utilized by skill acquisition centers for training of women in agriculture to enable them acquire the skills for success in palm produce marketing.