Relevance of the Training and Visit Extension Messages in the Multiple Cropping System in Wa District of The Upper West Region, Ghana

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa depends on agriculture for economic growth and the well being of its people. The sub-region, and indeed the whole of Africa, has been losing a running battle to make agricultural production meet the ever-increasing population. To make food production cope with the population growth and to achieve economic development, many extension models have been tried. Currently the pre-dominant extension system in Africa is the Training and Visit extension system. In Ghana the system was introduced first in the then Upper Region (now Upper West and Upper East regions) in 1978 as part of the Upper Region Development Project (URADEP). Despite the use of the system in the region for more than 15 years, there is no significant success in food production. In the case of W a District per capita food production has actually declined. There is concern that the nature of extension messages that are delivered under the Training and Visit extension system may not be relevant to multiple cropping systems and in rainfed agriculture (Axinn 1991). The people of Wa District practice multiple cropping system in addition to the raising of livestock. They also depend on rainfed agriculture. The objective of the study was therefore, to find out whether messages communicated in the Training and Visit approach is relevant in the prevalent multiple cropping system in the Wa District of the Upper West Region of Ghana. The population of the study comprised of all farmers living and farming within the Wa District. It also includes the extension agents operating in the area. Two samples were used for the study: - (i) 100 farmer respondents and (ii) 15 extension agent respondents. The farmer respondents consisted of 50 contact farmers and 50 noncontact farmers of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Simple random sampling was used for the selection of contact farmers and purposive sampling for noncontact farmers. A structured interview schedule was used to collect information from the farmer respondents and a questionnaire was administered to the extension agents. Data collected was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively using appropriate statistical methods. Chi-square tests was used to establish the statistical significance and relations between variables. The probability level used was 0.05. The sampled farming population was ageing one with a mean age of 45 years. Majority of the farmers had no formal education. Females and the youth were seldom involved in extension activities. The farmers were not generally involved in their needs identification but had good relations with the extension agents. Information provided was top-down. The information was timely and the farmers were satisfied about the way information was presented to them. They found the information to meet their needs. There was a significant difference in relevance of information to farmers practising the various cropping systems, as sole croppers find extension messages delivered far relevant than mixed croppers (x2=5.8, df=1 p<0.05). The availability of inputs, credit and rainfall were the basic hindrances to the utilisation of the information. Information flow from the contact farmers to the noncontact farmers occurs at lower level than expected in theory. The main source of information to the contact farmers was the extension agents. For the noncontact farmers their main source of information was other farmers and neighbours. To make the information relevant to all farmers, it is recommended that, farmers must necessarily be involved in their need identification, selection of contact farmers should be left to the farmers themselves and research should be done to find ways of increasing the relevance of extension messages to multiple crop farmers