Assessment of Information and Communication Technologies Used for Disseminating Innovations by Extension Agents in Ogun State, Nigeria

This research work was carried out to investigate the crop farmers’ assessment of information and communication technologies (ICT) used for innovation dissemination by Extension Agents in Ogun State, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select 105 crop farmers from two agricultural zones: Ikenne and Ilaro. The data collected in June and July 2013 were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools such as means, frequency and percentage distributions; while inferential statistical tool-chi-square was used to determine the relationship between the variables selected. The study showed that crop farmers were between the ages of 41 and 60 years, and their mean age was 47 years, 74.3% were males, 83.8% were married, 84.8% were literate, 59.0% were members of cooperative societies, 80.9% attended extension programmes, 56.2% cultivated between 2 - 6 acres of farmland, and majority (56.2%) were earning between N10, 000.00 – N30, 000.00 monthly and a mean of N16,939.39K. Radio, landline telephone, television, slides, DVD and overhead projectors were the most used information and communication technologies by Extension Agents. Original Research Article

Also, there was a significant relationship between age (X 2 =74.075), educational background (X 2 = 55.774), area of specialization (X 2 = 86.517), number of agricultural shows attended (X 2 = 27.989) and ICT used (X 2 = 377.323). The problem faced by crop farmers were inability of farmers to use ICT (X 2 =93.971), inability of farmers to perceive its benefits (X 2 =108.524), lack of technological infrastructure (X

INTRODUCTION
Agriculture remains the bedrock of Nigeria's economic and nutritional development with an estimated 70% of the country's over 140 million populace living in rural areas and engaging in agricultural-related activities [1,2,3]. Thus, agriculture provides employment for a large percentage of the nation's population, food for the populace and raw materials for agro-based industries. However, despite the involvement of large percentage of the population in agriculture, the country continues to spend the lean foreign reserve on importation of food. The perpetual food shortage is often blamed on ineffective agricultural research, lack of continuity in agricultural policies and programmes, poor implementation by administrators, low quality of extension and poor linkage system between research, extension and farmers [4].
However, the role of public agricultural extension service has traditionally being to provide the important link between agricultural researches and farming communities, especially for technology transfer in support of agriculture and rural development. However, strong criticism of public agricultural extension services has circulated in recent years [5]. According to [6] this criticism is due to its top-down approach, which has been supply-driven, technically weak, catering only for large farmers (progressive farmers) and providing insufficient coverage of the small-scale farmers, who are the producers of the bulk of food crops in Nigeria. This implied that proven agricultural technologies which are needed to ensure higher productivity and food security, do not reach the millions of small-scale farmers scattered in the rural areas. Consequently, these farmers have managed to obtain information from sources such as other farmers, inputs dealers, produce buyers and NGOs [7].
Given the urgent need for current Agricultural Knowledge and Information System (AKIS) by farmers, the use of conventional communication channels such as farm/home visit, personal letters, and use of contact farmers, for disseminating agricultural information was counterproductive. This calls for the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by both researchers and extension workers to transmit relevant information to farmers in a most efficient way [8]. Agricultural Extension, which depends largely on information exchange between and among farmers and a broad range of other actors, is an area in which ICT can have significant impact.
Research Scientists can relate directly with the farmers through ICTs. Frontline extension workers, who are the direct link between farmers and other actors in the agricultural knowledge and information system, are well positioned to make use of ICT to access expert knowledge or other types of information that could be beneficial to the farmers. It was noted that ICT can bring new information services to rural areas where farmers (end users) will have much greater control than ever before over current information channels [9]. Access to such new information sources is a crucial requirement for the sustainable development of the farming systems. They added that ICT can be of immense help by enabling extension workers to gather, store, retrieve and disseminate a broad range of information needed by farmers, thus transforming them from extension workers into knowledge workers (KW).
Agricultural development in Africa and Nigeria in particular, has been hampered by low level of agricultural information exchange. It was reported that in Nigeria, the national extension service is based on the Training and Visit (T and V) delivery system; traditionally supported by mobile cinema, video, television, radio and telephone being the only ICTs used by majority of extension workers [10]. During the last two decades, the world has witnessed an unprecedented growth in the area of ICT [11]. In spite of the rapid improvement in information and communication brought about in recent times, by science and technology, most of the extension workers in Nigeria in particular, still rely on the T and V system. Majority of the population in the developing world live in rural areas and has little or no access to agricultural information [12]. This study therefore assessed the Information and Communication Technologies used by Extension Agents in disseminating innovations to crop farmers in Ogun state. These research questions are addressed in this study. i.
What are the personal and socio economic characteristics of crop farmers in Ogun state? ii.
What are the types of information and communication technologies used by extension agent in Ogun state? iii.
What are the farmer's levels of adoption of these innovations? iv.
What are the problems faced by crop farmers on the use of information and communication technologies while adopting the innovations disseminated by extension agent?

Objectives of the Study
The general objective of the study was to assess the type of information and communication technologies used by extension agents in Ogun state. The specific objectives are to:i.
Describe the personal and socio economic characteristics of crop farmers in Ogun state. ii.
Identify the types of information and communication technologies used by extension agents in Ogun state. iii. Assess the farmer's level of adoption of these innovations iv.
Investigate the problems faced by crop farmers in adopting the innovations disseminated by extension agents.

Hypotheses of the Study
Ho 1: There is no significant relationship between the information and communication technologies used by extension agents and selected personal and socio economic characteristics of agents such as age, gender, education, social status, and economic status in Ogun state. Ho 2: There is no significant relationship between the problem of farmers in usage of information and communication technologies and adoption levels of farmers.

Sampling Technique and Sample Size
A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the respondents for the study. Firstly, from these four zones 50% of the zones were selected which were Ikenne and Ilaro. There were four blocks in Ikenne zone and four blocks in Ilaro zone. Therefore, the selection was 2 blocks from each zone. Secondly, 10% of existing cells in each zones were selected, this led to the selection of two cells in Ikenne and Ilaro in an alphabetical order. Thirdly, based on the structure of OGADEP, a cell consists of 80 contact farmers, hence from the selected cells, 25% of the contact farmers were selected and this resulted into the selection of 41 and 64 contact farmers from Ikenne and Ilaro zones. The research instrument was administered to the respondents in an interview section. The questions were read by the interviewer who helped the crop farmers to record their options immediately. Data collected were subjected to both descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics included frequency counts, percentages and means. Inferential Statistical tool used was chi-square analysis.

Age and gender of farmers
Majority (61.9%) of sampled respondents were between the ages of 41 and 60 years. The mean age of the crop farmers was 47years and at this age they were considered highly productive and active to undertake the strenuous tasks associated with farm work. This is in line with the assertion that farming should not be left to the aged only as most people think [16]. The ratio of the male to female crop farmers in this study was found to be 78:27. This is, however, against gender studies which seem to suggest that women participate more than men in most farming activities [17].

Marital status and education
Majority (83.8%) of the respondents were married, only 5.7% were singles and 9.5% widowed. The high percentage of married respondents signified the importance attached to marriage in most rural societies in Nigeria. Marriage is paramount to the continuous existence of man and the sustenance of the society since members of a society have to form families through procreation. On education, about 50.5% of respondents attended primary schools while 15.2% had secondary education. In all, about 84.8% of the respondents had formal education. This is in line with the assertion that most of the respondents were literate [18]. This is highly expected to enhance extension work and adoption of new ideas and technologies.

Secondary Occupation
Majority (34.3%) of the respondents did not have other occupation apart from farming, 33.3% were private business owners, and 26.7% were traders. This implied that most of the farmers do not have other sources of income apart from farming, unlike those with private businesses, trading, bricklayering and farming. This distribution generally revealed the relative importance of farming in southwestern Nigeria and Nigeria in general because agriculture is the largest employer of labour in the country. In fact, those that were not directly engaged in farming (growing crops and raising livestock) were indirectly engaged through marketing of agricultural produce [19] (See Table 1).

Membership of Cooperative Societies
Majority (59.0%) of the respondents were members of one form of cooperative societies or the other while 41.0% do not belong to any form of cooperative societies at all, majority (45.7%) of the crop farmers did not contribute their monthly due to cooperative society and are not better than non-members since they cannot ripe the advantages of membership. This is in line with another study which concluded that Cooperative Society membership distribution of the respondents showed that majority of the farmers sampled did not belong to cooperative societies [20].

Attendance of Extension Programmes
About 77.1% of the crop farmers attended one form of extension programme or the other while 22.9% did not attend extension programmes. Also majority (36.2%) of the crop farmers attended extension programme sometimes, 29.5% attended often, 19.0% never attended, while 15.2% attended very often. This indicated a poor performance in attendance of extension programmes by the respondents as asserted by [21].

Farm Size
Majority (56.2%) of the crop farmers cultivated between 2 and 6 acres of farmland, though about 35% cultivated between 7 and 26 acres while 1.9% of the crop farmers cultivated between 0.1-0.5 acre of farmland. The average farm size of the crop farmers were 6.7 acres. The implication of this was that majority (56.2%) of crop farmers had high usage level of their farm size. Therefore high usage of farm size might result into a larger crop produced. This is in line with the assertion of [19]) that farm sizes owned by respondents were mostly in small and medium scale (See Table 2).

Monthly Farm Income
Monthly estimated farm income showed majority (56.2%) earned between N10,000-N30,000. The monthly mean farm income was N16,939.39k. The implication of this was that majority (56.2%) earned average income from their respective farms. This is in line with the assertion of [19]) that respondents' income distribution was of low income group who might not be in position to readily afford or access new ICT facilities. Also, about 37.1% of the crop farmers did not have other source of farm income apart from farming, The mean of non-farm income was N10,742.80. The implication of this was that 33.3% of the crop farmers fell to the medium level of the non-farm income, while the majority (37.1%) did not have other sources of income apart from farming.

Farm Produce
About 87.6% of maize farmers harvested less than 5,000 kg from their farm, and 48.6% of cassava farmers got between 1001 and 5,000 kg. The mean of maize farm was 3,947.62 kg, while that of cassava farm was 5078.10 kg. The implication of this was that majority (87.6%) were in medium level of output from their maize farm while majority (48.6%) were below the average output of the cassava farm. This indicated that most of the crop farmers that benefited from extension programme made less than 5,000 kg from their maize farm and 5,001-10,000 kg from their cassava farm (See Table 3).

Types of Information and Communication Technologies Used by Extension Agents
Information and communication technologies used by Extension Agents revealed that radio was the most used information and communication technology used by the Extension Agents having 51.6%, followed by the use of slides having 45.2%, telephone landline having 30.1%. Also, 29.0% utilized DVD, 25.8% utilized computer, 24.7% utilized overhead projector as well as 21.5% utilized mobile phone in information dissemination among the crop farmers. This however shows that there are low levels of utilization of various forms of Information and Communication Technologies by the Extension Agents. This may lead to low adoption of innovations by the crop farmers as they were not adequately educated on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (See Table 4).  =57.301) and number of agricultural shows attended by extension Agents (X 2 =27.989)). Therefore, the null hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between the Information and Communication Technologies used by Extension Agents and their selected personal and socio economic characteristics in the study area was rejected and the alternative hypothesis accepted that: There was a positive and significant relationship between Information and Communication Technologies used to teach crop farmers and Agents` personal and professional characteristics such as age, education, specialization, previous experience as Extension Agents, number of agricultural shows attended by them and ICT used (See Table 5).