Impact of Adopted Village Extension Project (AVEP) Agricultural Technologies Transfer on Income of Participants from Selected Research Institutes in Nigeria

Abstract

This study determined the impact of Adopted Village Extension Project (AVEP) agricultural technologies transfer on income of participants from selected agricultural research institutes in Nigeria. Three-stage sampling technique was employed to select 492 respondents comprising 246 participants and 246 non-participants on which structured questionnaire was administered complemented with and interview schedule. Primary data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages and mean; Gini coefficient model and z-test statistics. Findings from the study revealed that majority (83.7%) of the participants were male and 91.9% were married, while majority (90.2%) of the non-participants were male and 93.1% were married. The mean age, education, farming experience, household size and farm size of the participants were 37 years, 13 years, 13 years, 6 people amd 3 hectares respectively, while mean age, education, farming experience, household size and farm size of the non-participants were 52 years, 8 years, 19 years, 10 people amd 5 hectares respectively. The result of the Gini-coefficient for the participants revealed mean annual income of ₦1,008,963 with gini index of 0.4474, while that of non-participants was ₦427,283 with gini index of 0.3001. The z-test statistics value of 27.084 at 1% level of probability revealed that there is a significant difference in income of the participants and non-participants. In conclusion, agricultural technologies transfer through AVEP of the selected research institutes had significant impact of the income of the participants. Therefore, the study recommended that the project should be scaled-up to accommodate more participants and other villages due to the significant impact