ABSTRACT

 The study examined the participation of women in farmer education for poultry production in Enugu State, Nigeria. Objectives that guided the study were the methods of teaching adopted m farmer education for poultry production, extension media used by extension agents in disseminating new technologies, adoption rate of poultry technologies by women farmers, extent of participation of women in farmer education for poultry production and the constraints faced by women in farmer education for poultry production. Five research questions were raised and answered in line with the purpose of the study. Five null hypotheses were also formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The study was carried out in Enugu State which has three Agricultural Zones. The population of the study was two hundred and seventy seven (277)made up of 193 registered women poultry farmers and 84 extension agents. Census sampling technique was adopted. A sixty item questionnaire was developed form the review of related literature and was face validated by three experts from the Department of Agricultural and Home Economics Education of Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. Cronbach alpha method was used to determine the internal consistency and the reliability coefficient of the instrument; an index value of 0.89 was obtained. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, mean and standard deviation, while inferential statistics such as t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05% level of significance. The findings revealed that demonstration and discussion methods ranked highest among the teaching methods used by extension agents for farmer education with mean scores of 3.29 and 3.18 respectively. Fann and home visits and radio ranked highest among the extension media used by extension agents for farmer education for poultry production with mean scores of 3.23 and 2.80 respectively. The grand mean of 2.16 showed that the extent of women participation in farmer education was low. Women farmers' adoption of poultry production practices was low with grand mean score of 2.42 recorded. Lack of operational finances for training and being occupied with multivariate activities were the major constraints faced by women in participating in farmer education. Hypothesis 3 showed that there was significant difference in the mean responses of registered women poultry farmers and extension agents on the extent of women participation in farmer education for poultry production. The study concluded that women participation in farmer education in poultry production was low and finance significantly influenced women participation in farmer education. It recommended that the Enugu State Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) should employ and train more female extension agents in order to reach more women farmers to meet the protein needs of consumers.