Information Needs of Organic Crop Farmers in Ekiti State of Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the areas of information needs of organic farmers in Ekiti State, so as to promote the practice given its numerous benefits to human beings and preservation of the environment. Organic Agriculture is a farm production management system whose activities and practices favour ecosystem balance and sanity, biodiversity, biological cycles, soil biological activities, as well as eliminating food poisoning; all of which are promoted by the conventional practices of intensive agro-chemical use and other off-farm inputs. One hundred and twenty (120) registered organic farmer of Justice, Development and Peace Commission of the Ekiti State Catholic Diocese were selected by simple random sampling from 2 of the 16 Local Government Areas in the State (Ido/Osi and Oye). It is revealed that majority of the respondents were young, physically and economically active. Majority of the respondents are educated to tertiary level. Radio is their main source of information with a weighted score of 119 while manure application is the organic farming method mostly involved in the practice with a weighted score of 200, and the most important areas of information needs is the organic product price with a weighted score of 170.8. Consequently, a significant relationship is established between involvement and areas of information needs using PPMC to test the formulated hypothesis. It is, therefore, recommended that radio programme on Agriculture should be richly encoded with indicated areas of information needs of the organic farmers to improve their expertise and the advantages derivable there-in.