Evaluation of agricultural extension and delivery services in southwest Nigeria

The study on evaluation of agricultural extension and delivery services was carried out in Southwest, Nigeria. The study affirms that participation of people in the achievement of rural development programs in Nigeria, agricultural and non-agricultural, is faced with great challenges. The importance of extension for rural development has been valued quite differently over the course of Nigeria’s rural development efforts. Increasingly, technical change has been recognized as a major pre-requisite for rural development. Agricultural Extension is defined as system for the exchange of information and transfer of skills between farmers, extension workers and researchers for the purpose of assisting farmers to identify farming production problems: with the aim that farmers will adopt technological and socio-economically based solutions that will increase farm resource use efficiency, improve the management and conservation of natural resources and improve their living standards. It is achievable through an adult training process. Agricultural extension activities in Nigeria have developed from the largely regulatory body of the government’s rural administration with its main functions of ensuring the adoption of improved technologies. At the time of independence the major government agency charged with agricultural extension and most of the rural development functions were the Ministry of Agriculture which, continues, to reflect this major involvement in rural development. One of the most effective means of achieving increased agricultural productivity is through the use of modern farm inputs like fertilizers, improved high yielding seeds or seedlings, herbicides, pesticides, organic manure, as well as modern farm implements and equipment.