Access To Extension And Poverty Alleviating Strategies of Farm Families In Adamawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

The strategies employed by farm families in alleviating poverty in the face of their level of access to extensioninformation are thefocus of this study. Data were collectedfrom 120householdheads offarmfamiliesfrom Adamawastate. Results showed that 60percent of the household heads have low access to extension information, with the mostcommon sources being the VEAs (73%) and i/formal organizations (66%). The deregulation of the economy hasaffected expenditure on extension and thus reduced the number ofextension agents.The results revealed that thepoverty alleviating strategies employedby the respondents include cultivating severalcrops, trading, brewing oflocal drinks, leasing out offarmland andcraft making. Resultsfurther showedno significantrelationship between respondents’ membership of informal organizations and the poverty alleviating strategies theyemployed while a significant relationship exist between respondents’ access to extension and the poverty alleviatingstrategies they employed (X2 = 3.68;p =0.04). This indicated a linkage between respondents’ access to extension atidthe poverty alleviating strategies they employed. There is therefore the need to improve the farmfamilies’ access toextension in effort at assisting them alleviatepoverty.