Farmers' Perception of Effectiveness of Agricultural Extension Delivery in Cross-River State, Nigeria.

Evaluation of the success of extension delivery programmes, in most cases, has focused on farmers, viz-`a-viz behavioural change in terms of adoption as well as increased use of production inputs, yield, income and impact assessment (farmers standard of living). And when the indices on these variables are low, farmers are blamed for not responding to extension delivery programmes. However, the effectiveness and efficiency with which extension personnel deliver extension services cannot be over looked as this may in fact be a greater reason for success or failure of extension programmes. In this regard, the study was conducted to find out how farmers perceive or evaluate the effectiveness of extension delivery. In conducting the study, 180 farmers participating in extension programme in Cross River state were randomly selected using the multi-stage random sampling technique. The data collected through a structured questionnaire were analyzed using the t-test of significance of difference between sample and population means. , The study found that farmers were unanimous that extension delivery process was not very effective as the study found no significant difference between the population and sample means at 95% confidence level. The strongest links in the delivery process areas were found to be farmer visits, meetings between farmers and extension personnel, demonstration, while the weakest links were organization of Research-Extension-Farmer-Linkages, farmer training programmes and distribution Farmers have been blamed for poor adoption on the ground that they are conservative. The level of adoption should not always be used in measuring success or failure of extension delivery because the effectiveness of the extension delivery mechanism is to a large extent responsible for success or failure of extension programme. An alternative means of evaluating extension programmes is measurement of the learning situations provided, which is extension delivery mechanism or process as means of measuring extension effectiveness. Adoption focuses on behavioural changes in the farmer, while learning situations focus on extension personnel and their activities The effectiveness of extension personnel in conducting its activities can be used to assess success of extension programme. This is because if appropriate teaching/learning situation is provided, it follows that learning or relatively permanent and positive change in behavior of the farmer would take place. Such teaching/learning situations are effectiveness indicators (Misra,1997). Extension effectiveness indicators are used to assess the effectiveness of extension personnel Hence, extension effectiveness may be determined by the level of awareness of extension services created among the farmers, number of visits paid by the village extension worker, percentage of scheduled meetings held between farmers and extension workers, number of field meetings held, regularity of meetings held by village extension worker, number of field days organized by village extension worker , monthly or quarterly, etc., number of demonstrations organized by the village extension worker within specified time frame (monthly, quarterly, annually), number of supervisory visits, number and regularity of research-extension linkage workshops and farmer training sessions/farmers trained. Extension effectiveness indicators are shown in table 1.