RELEVANCE OF THE TRAINING AND VISIT EXTENSION MESSAGES IN THE MULTIPLE CROPPING SYSTEM IN WA DISTRICT OF THE UPPER WEST REGION, GHANA

ABSTRACTS

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 W est 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