Abstract

Ajah Julius

The study examined the impacts of gender and farmers’ level of education on access to agricultural extension services in Abuja. A purposive technique was adopted for sample selection while semistructured questionnaires were used for data collection. A sample of 80 rural male and female farmers who had post secondary, secondary, primary and no formal school education were used for the study. In each of the four educational categories, 10 male and 10 female farmers were selected. Two-way analysis of variance was used for data analysis and results indicated that irrespective of education, there was no significant difference (p > 0.05) in gender access to agricultural extension services. But, the mean response (3.03) indicated that female farmers had slightly more access to agricultural extension services than their male counterparts (2.98). Similarly, irrespective of gender, there was no significant (p > 0.05) effect of farmers’ level of education on access to agricultural extension services. Remarkably, farmers who had no formal school education had more access (3.40) to agricultural extension services than farmers who had at least primary school education. Furthermore, there was no significant (p > 0.05) interaction effect of gender and education on farmers’ access to agricultural extension services. Based on the findings, the paper concluded that gender and level of education were not major determinants of farmers’ access to agricultural extension services in the study area.