Organization and management of extension services for women farmers in south-western Nigeria

In comparison to men, rural women lack access to necessary agricultural information and services. Right from the inception of agricultural extension services in Nigeria, as in most developing countries, women have been systematically excluded.The focus of this study is to appraise the recent policy reforms aimed at improving extension services to women farmers, hence, the study examines the organization and management of extension services to rural women in Southwestern Nigeria. A total of 1,033 women farmers randomly selected from four states in south-western Nigeria were interviewed as well as 262 male farmers in one of the states to conduct a comparative analysis on gender basis. Extension agents were also interviewed.Gender can be said to categorically affect women farmers' participation in agricultural extension services, even with the improved extension services for various reasons:time constraints on women farmers due to their multiple roles as home makers and income earnersrestricted mobility due to poor transportation systems in the rural areas also limits their levels of participation in agricultural extension activitiesThe main findings and recommendations of the present paper go as follows:data analysis revealed that only 55.8% of the female respondents were aware of the presence of village extension agents, while only about one third (35.8%) of them actually had regular contacts with these agentsthe radio was ranked as the most important means of information for agricultural activities after which extension agents and spouses were mentioned as other important sourcesa few respondents identified school children as one of their sources of informationaccording to extension agents, the two main reasons for poor and low adoption of innovations among their clientele are lack of labor and lack of needed input or outright unavailability of such inputsmale agents will seemingly continue to be involved in extension services to women farmers, if more of them are to be reached with agricultural extension servicesthere is a need for appropriate culture-based gender awareness training for both male and female extension agents in order to improve the delivery of extension services to women farmersIn conclusion the women extension policy reform has improved extension services to women, however there would have been greater impacts if concurrent attention had been placed on improvement of rural infrastructures such as transportation, market etc.