CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Attitude is the degree of positive or negative impact related to psychological objects and one major approach to see the impact of extension service is to start with the farmers’ attitude. The employment of addition qualified and knowledgeable extension agents, particularly subject matter specialist and the adoption of the farmer first approach to agricultural analysis and development are suggested for farmers to indicate a positive attitude towards the extension service (Oladosu, 2012). As technology improves by the day, several approaches have evolved and been applied to ensure effective dissemination of extension service so as to improve the living standard of rural farmers in Nigeria. It was within the cause of this quest that it was absolutely found that the role of rural farmers was very important and could not be undermined when targeting an increase in productivity and living standard of the farmers. Extension service is particularly important to farmers in order to increase their agricultural production by transferring information aimed at increasing knowledge, attitude and skills of the farmers.
More so, in many developing countries, agricultural development is hinged on extension services by helping farmers to identify, analyze and link with research on their production problems. They also create awareness on opportunities for improvement of farm yields leading to increased income and better standard of living (Van den ban and Hawkins, 1998; Balantyne and Bokre, 2003). Agriculture is the key to Nigerian economy accounting for about forty percent of GDP and employing about 70% of the active population of over 140 million individuals. More than half of the populations live in the rural area. It is without contest the leading agricultural power and also the largest market in West Africa. 82 million hectares out of Nigeria’s total land of 91 million hectares were found to be arable. However, only 42% of the cultivable area was farmed and the majority of farmers have an average farm size of 1.2 ha. Agriculture remains a key component of Nigeria’s economy, but, the sector significantly under-performed its potentials. Agricultural extension as a system aims to exchange information and transfer skills between farmers, extension workers and researchers to help identify farming problems. This is achievable through an o-the-cu, adult coaching, communicating with individual members of farmers community advice, an assistance with respect to knowledge and methods of technical agriculture, with due consideration of the economic and social circumstances of the individual and other people collectively. In a nut shell extension is an educational process that uses varieties of methods designed to help farmers improve living standard. Similarly, extension methods could be used for understanding the best ways to handle farmers so as to meet their need.