5 Empirical Analysis
5.5 Granger Causality
Department of Agricultural Extension and Communication
Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
The Study was carried out to determine the correlates of interpersonal communication channels' usage by rural farmers in Benue State, Nigeria. A sample size of 316 rural farmers was used for the study and the selection was done using a stratified random sampling technique.
Interview schedule was used in eliciting information from the respondents. Both descriptive a n d i n f e re n t i a l s t a t i s t i c s w e re e m p l o y e d i n t h e a n a l y s i s o f t h e d a t a . Relatives/friends/neighbours were the most regularly available, accessible and used interpersonal communication channels. Extension agents were not readily available and used by the farmers. Use of interpersonal channels of communication by rural farmers was found to have positive significant relationship with the following characteristics: Social participation level of farmers (r = 0.31), channel credibility (r = 0.30), channel availability/accessibility (r = 0.83) and cost of channel use (r = 0.61). Since social participation level of farmers was found to positively influence interpersonal channels usage, formation and use of viable local groups should be encouraged or facilitated in Agricultural Extension work.
Key Words: Interpersonal communication channels, usage, correlates, rural farmers.
INTRODUCTION
Nigeria has elaborate agricultural research and extension systems. Prominent among the agricultural research centers are the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as well as 18 national agricultural research institutes.
There are also three specialized universities of agriculture. Far reaching innovations that are capable of boosting farmers' agricultural production and Nigeria's economic development have been developed by the aforementioned institutions. Unfortunately, most of these innovations do not get to the farmers and this has been attributed to lack of e f f e c t i v e a g r i c u l t u r a l i n f o r m a t i o n dissemination machinery (Ozowa, 1995).
A wealth of research results exists in the agricultural research system in Nigeria.
However, these results are not fully made available to the end users, i. e. the farmers.
Limited access to agricultural information has, in fact, been identified as one of the most serious constraints to agricultural development in West Africa (CTA, 1996).
According to Okwu and Obinne (2000), the problem of agricultural development in Nigeria, like many other developing countries of the world, lies with the rate of t r a n s f e r o f i m p r o v e d a g r i c u l t u r a l technologies to farmers and not with the lack of the technology per se.
In Nigeria, a number of institutional and governmental organs have been established to ensure that farmers get to know and adopt agricultural innovations relevant to their situations. They include the National
Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS), the extension services of the Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs), Ministries of Agriculture, C o o p e r a t i v e E x t e n s i o n C e n t r e s o f Universities and the public enlightenment units of agricultural research centres. These b o d i e s d i s s e m i n a t e o r f a c i l i t a t e dissemination of agricultural innovations through both interpersonal and mass media channels of communication. Some of the interpersonal channels include extension agents, farmer-to-farmer contact, friends and relatives.
Agricultural modernization requires farmers to be well-informed and encouraged to use improved farm technologies and modern agricultural practices. Some questions concerning the utilization and effectiveness of the various communication channels in agricultural extension services delivery in Benue State are pertinent and need to be addressed empirically. Which interpersonal communication channels are available and which ones are being used to disseminate farm innovation messages to the farmers?
What is the relative usage of the channels by farmers? What are the various factors affecting the usage of the interpersonal communication channels?
Attempts have been made through some studies such as those of Ilevbaoje (1998), Oche (2000), Jeffery (2001) and Obinne, Ndubilo and Ozowa (2000) to address some of the questions raised above. However, none of them addressed factors influencing use of interpersonal channels by rural farmers in Benue State, Nigeria.
The specific objectives of this study are to identify farmers' personal and farm-related characteristics, assess farmers' usage of interpersonal communication channels as sources of agricultural information, determine the level of relationship between use of interpersonal channels and farmers' personal and farm-related characteristics, and to determine the level of relationship between farmers' use of interpersonal channels and characteristics of channels
The two hypotheses formulated for the study are
Ho I: There is no significant relationship between farmers' personal/farm-related characteristics and use of interpersonal channels as sources of agricultural information
Ho II : There is no significant relationship between farmers' use of interpersonal channels and channel characteristics.
Conceptual Framework
I n t e r p e r s o n a l c o m m u n i c a t i o n i s characterized by the presence of two or more individuals who have the capacity to supply cues for others to act upon in a social contact and context. The participants must be reasonably capable of integrating both the encoding and the decoding functions into an a p p r o p r i a t e p a t t e r n o f m e a n i n g . Communication codes represent both verbal and non-verbal cues as intended consciously or unconsciously by the communicator and perceived by the receiver or encoder of the message.
Interpersonal communication setting is largely unstructured with relatively few rules governing the frequency, form, or content of the messages. It is highly spontaneous and participants decide to speak when they choose and to whom they choose.
Interpersonal communication has four subsets viz dyadic, triadic, family and small group communication.
The act of using media or channels of communication may be described in terms of the amount of content used, the type of content used, the frequency of use and the way of using it (Windahl, 1979).
The concept of 'use' of communication channels or media is of great importance because the knowledge of it will provide keys for understanding and predicting outcomes of communication process.
E x p o s u r e t o ( o r u s e o f ) v a r i o u s communication media or channels is a pre-condition for any effect of media content on people to occur.
METHODOLOGY Benue State of Nigeria is the study area for this research work. The State was carved out of former Benue-Plateau State on February 3 , 1976 and currently has 23 Local rd
Government Areas (LGAs). It derives its name from River Benue and has Makurdi as its capital.
Benue State lies in the Middle Belt of Nigeria
o o
between longitude 6 35'E to 10 E of the
o 0
Greenwich Meridian and latitude 6 30'N to 8 10'N of the Equator. The State shares boundaries with six states namely, Nasarawa to the north, Taraba to the east, Cross-River to the south, Kogi to the west and Enugu/Ebonyi to the southwest as well as Republic of Cameroun to the south east. The State has an estimated population of about 4 million people and occupies a landmass of 30,955 square kilometers
The State is made up of 3 major ethnic groups namely Tiv, Idoma and Igede as well as several other small ethnic groups.Most of the people in the state are farmers while the inhabitants of the riverine area engage in fishing as their primary or important secondary occupation.
Enumerators, specially trained for the work, were engaged for data collection. They were
made up of some graduate assistants in the College of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Agriculture, Makurdi and Extension staff of BNARDA.
The researcher personally supervised the data collection.
Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the analysis of data.
Specifically, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation was used to test HO and HO . 1 2
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Personal and Farm-related Characteristics of Respondents
Frequency distribution of the respondents' personal and socio-economic characteristics is contained in Table 1. The age distribution shows that majority of the respondents were in the prime age of 30 to 59 years. They constituted 75.8% of the respondents. The mean age of respondents was 49.24 years.
Those the active age of 30 to 59 years are either too young to be heads of farm family or are students in schools and above this age bracket (30 59 years) may be getting old to withstand the rigours of farm work. This finding is similar to Abolagba and Uraih (2002) which found that young and middle age people had left business in the hands of relatively older people in the rural areas.
TABLE 1: PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS' PERSONAL AND FARM-RELATED CHARACTERISTICS
N = 316
Characteristic feature Frequency
% Age (years)
0 – 19 2 0.6
20 – 29 13 4.1
30 – 39 57 18.0
40 – 49 91 28.7
50 – 59 92 29.0
60 – 69 42 13.2
70 and above 19 6.0
Mean 49.42
TABLE 1 CONTD.
Characteristic Feature Frequency %
Educational level (years)
No formal education 97 30.6
Primary school Cert. 99 31.3
JSSC 8 2.5
SSCE 72 22.7
OND/NCE 23 7.3
HND/1st Degree 12 3.8
M.Sc & above 5 1.6
Household Size
1 – 5 68 21.5
6 – 10 110 34.8
11 – 15 69 21.8
16 – 20 33 10.4
21 – 25 18 5.7
26 – 30 8 2.5
Above 30 10 3.2
Mean 11
Farm Size (ha)
20 6.3
2 1
–4 176 55.6
5 – 7 76 24.0
8 – 10 30 9.5
11 – 13 2 0.6
14 – 16
5 1.6
17 – 19 3 1.0
20 and above 4 1.3
Mean 4.51
≥
Farming experience (years) 6.3
1 – 10 41 13.0
11 – 20 80 25.3
21 – 30 106 33.5
31 – 40 62 19.6
41 – 50 19 6.0
51 – 60 7 2.2
Above 60 1 0.3
Sex
Male 309 97.6
Female 7 2.2
TABLE 1 CONTD.
Characteristic Feature Frequency %
Marital Status
Single 5 1.6
Married 308 97.3
Widowed 1 0.3
Separated 2 0.6
Social Participation
Low (0 – 3) 259 81.9
Middle (4 – 6) 56 17.7
High (7 and above) 1 0.3
Source: Field survey, 2005
Many of the respondents (30.7%) had no formal education and most of the educated respondents (56.6%) had only primary or secondary school certificates as their highest educational qualification. In most cases, N i g e r i a n w i t h h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n a l qualifications go for white collar jobs. Thus, farming as a career is dominated by those with little or no formal education.
Majority of the respondents (56.3%) had household size of 1 to 10 people. The large household size is characteristic of Nigerian farm families in view of many hands that are required to supply labour on the farm since most or all of the operations are carried out manually.
Generally, the respondents had small farm size with 61.5% of them having between 1 to 4ha. An average farm size of 4.5 hectares was obtained. This connotes that the study area comprises small-scale farmers and this findings is similar to that of Adekunle and Alfred (2002) and agrees with classification of Nigerian farmers as small-scale ones by Olayide. (1980) since most of the farms were less than 5.99 ha per holding.
Respondents with farming experience of 21 to 30 years had the highest frequency distribution constituting 33.50% of the total number of respondents. This was followed by those with 11 to 20 years of farming experience who constituted 25.28% of the respondent.
Most of the respondents (97.64%) were males. This is due to the fact that heads of the households selected were the ones interviewed and males are in most cases heads of households except in the case of widows. Most of the respondents (97.33%) were married. This is expected and common among farming population in Nigeria in view of the helping hand(s) required on the farm.
Social participation, i.e. membership of organized groups and active participation therein, was generally low among the respondents. About 82% of the respondents were in low social participation category, 17.70% were found in the middle class and less than 1% (0.32%) was found in the high class of social participation. This is an indication of a generally low membership of and active participation in organized groups such as cooperative societies in the study area.
Use of Interpersonal Channels of C o m m u n i c a t i o n i n A g r i c u l t u r a l Extension
Table 2 shows the interpersonal channels usage frequency by farmers in the study area
Among the interpersonal channels, friends/relations/neighbours (41.14%), constitute the most regularly used channel followed by extension agents (37.02%) and then the contact farmers (22.15%).
Friends/relations/neighbours were used by 90.82% of the respondents for obtaining agricultural information at different levels.
While 41.14% of the respondents used them regularly, 49.68% used them sometimes.
Extension agents and contact farmers were indicated as used by 86.70% and 71.20% of the respondents respectively. These findings are similar to those of Mohammed and Wanaso (1993).
Table 2: Interpersonal Channel Usage Frequency N=316
Communication
channel Channel Usage
Regularly Sometimes Never
Frequency % Frequency % Frequency %
Extension Agents 117 37.0 157 49.7 42 13.3
Contact farmers 70 22.2 155 49.1 91 28.8
Opinion leaders 50 18.7 132 41.8 125
39.6
Friends/neighbours 130 41.1 157 49.7 29
9.2
Source: Field survey, 2005
Relationship Between Interpersonal Communication Channels' Usage and F a r m e r s ' P e r s o n a l / F a r m - r e l a t e d Characteristics
The Four personal characteristics of farmers (age, education, household size, and social participation) were correlated with usage of interpersonal channels using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). Only social participation showed significant positive relationship with interpersonal channels usage at 5% level of probability.
The relationship between social participation and interpersonal channels usage had a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.31. Table 3 gives the details of the results.
Two farm-related characteristics viz farm size and farming experience were correlated with farmers' usage of interpersonal communication channels using PPMC. No significant relationship was found between any of these characteristics and farmers' usage of interpersonal channels. The results are contained in Table 3.
Relationship Between Farmers' Use of Interpersonal Communication Channels and Channel Characteristics
Channel credibility, channel availability/
accessibility, and cost of channel use were correlated with farmers' use of interpersonal channels using PPMC. All the four channel characteristics show significant positive relationship with interpersonal channels' usage at 5% level of significance. Details of the results are contained in Table 3. Channel credibility, availability/ accessibility and
cost of use had correlation coefficients of 0.30, 0.83 and 0.61 respectively. Channel availability/ accessibility and cost of channel
use were also significant at 1% level of probability.
Table 3: Correlates of Farmers' Use of interpersonal channels as sources of agricultural information.
variable correlation coefficient (r)
Age
Farmers’ Socio-Economic Characteristics
Education Household size Social participation
0.09 -0.29 0.14 0.31*
Farmers’ farm-related Characteristics Farm size
Farming experience 0.2 1
- 0.13 Channels Characteristics
Channel credibility
Channel availability/accessibility Cost of channel use
0.30*
0.83**
0.61**
**Significant at P≤0.01 level
*: Significant at P≤0.05 level Source: Field survey, 2005
The significant positive relationship between social participation and interpersonal channel usage is in agreement with that of Singh (1981). Membership of and active participation in social organizations such as farmers' cooperative societies, age groups, etc shall increase interaction and exchange of agricultural information at interpersonal level. The result also corroborates that of Ilevbaoje (1998), which found social participation to have meaningfully contributed to variation and in predicting the use of IPC as source of agricultural information.
For a communication channel to be selected for use by a farmer, that channel must first be
available, it must be perceived by the farmer as credible or trustworthy in giving relevant information or messages in the subject matter concerned.
Contrary to the findings of Williams and Williams (1971), education, farm size and socio-economic status were found to have no significant relationship with IPC usage.
Contrary to the a priori expectation, usage of interpersonal channels was found to have significant positive relationship with the cost associated with the use of the channels.
This seems to be an aberration and needs further investigation.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMEN-DATIONS
Relatives/friends/neighbours constituted the most regularly available, accessible and u s e d i n t e r p e r s o n a l c h a n n e l s o f communication. Extension agents were not
readily available and used by the farmers Only 34% of the sampled farmers indicated regular availability/accessibility of extension agents to them as sources of agricultural information.
It can therefore be concluded from the study that an increase in interpersonal channel usage by a farmer in pursuit of agricultural information shall lead to some reasonable increase in knowledge and practice of farm innovations.
Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are hereby made:
(1) To ensure regular availability/
accessibility of reliable information on improved technologies to rural farmers, efforts should be made to employ more extension agents.
(2) Since social participation positively influences interpersonal channel usage as a source of agricultural information, it is recommended that extension agencies should identify existing viable local groups and where such groups are not viable or in existence, formation of new ones should be facilitated which would form the basis of extension teaching efforts.
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