Farmers’ Perception and Willingness to Pay for Technical Agricultural Information on Maize Production in Orire Local Government Area of Oyo State.

Abstract

Agricultural extension services have been playing a central role in transformation process of agricultural sector in Nigeria but there are challenges which affect the quality of service delivery especially increasing cost of services and poor funding and therefore, promoting emergence of new extension strategies offered by private sector . The study investigated the perception of maize crop farmers and willingness to pay for technical agricultural information in Oyo State, Nigeria. Data were collected by administering interview schedule to 127 maize crop farmers selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics; Mean age of the respondents was 46.7 years with modal class of age category of 41-50 years. Majority (66.1%) of the sampled respondents were males, 81.9% were married with average household size of 6 members. Technical agricultural information the respondents were willing to pay for include improved high yielding maize varieties (MS=1.09), method of fertilizer application (MS=1.07) and selection rate of chemical application for weed control (MS=l.06). Majority (52.8%) of the respondents had unfavourable disposition to willingness to pay for technical agricultural information. Respondents' household size (r=0.365, P<0.05), farming experience (r=0.568, P<0.05) cultivatable farm size (r=0.228,P<0.05) were significantly related to willingness to pay for technical agricultural information on maize production. The study therefore recommends that technical agricultural information on maize production should be made available to farmers through a private extension service in order to meet the extension information need of farmers in the study area.