Agricultural Extension Roles towards Adapting to the Effects of Taro Leaf Blight (Tlb) Disease in Nsukka Agricultural Zone, Enugu State

Abstract

Agricultural sector has not been able to perform its roles as the food source of the nation effectively due to a lot of factors; diseases, pest etc militating against its practice. The major role of agricultural extension in many countries in the past was seen to be transfer of new technologies from researchers to farmers and given the mandate of transforming rural communities and farmers through dissemination of information that will improve or change their standard of living. The study assessed roles of extension towards adapting to the effects of TLB disease in Nsukka agricultural zone, Enugu state. A multi-stage random sampling method was employed to select a total numbers of seventy five (75) cocoyam farmers were selected for the study. Data were collected by the use of structured interview and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result shows that majority (93.3%) of the respondents never had any contact with extension agents, and that the very few farmers (6.7%) who had access to extension contacts were visited only once a year. The findings also shows that there is little or no extension role towards cocoyam disease adaptation, as only (2.7%) of the respondent indicated to had been taught by an extension agents on how to spray fungicides, while (1.3%) indicated that they had been encouraged by an extension agents to destroy plant debris and practice crop rotation respectively. It was also shown that majority of the cocoyam farmers affirmed that extension agents have never played the following roles towards assisting farmers to adapt to the effects of TLB disease: Supplying of resistance varieties of TLB cocoyam corm by extension agent, Supplying of fungicides by extension staff at a subsidized rate, spraying equipment were made available at a subsidized rate by extension agent, they make credit source accessible for buying of fungicides, etc. The study therefore recommends that awareness should be increased and created by extension agents by proper dissemination of information on cocoyam TLB disease among farmers. Moreover, Private and public extension agencies should invest in cocoyam research to assist in solving farmer’s problems.

Keywords: Extension roles, Taro leaf blight disease, Cocoyam farmers and Adaptation