The role of agricultural extension service on agricultural development: The case of Walayta Sodo Zuria District, Ethiopia

Abstract

Most of agricultural producers in the study area still use the traditional approach in crop production with technological change very slow. In view of this, Agricultural Extension Services have been adopted by the government as a major agricultural transformation strategy. Nevertheless, the expected impact from the intervention has not been realized due to inadequate funding, lack of logistics, insufficient field Staffs and non-participatory modes of technology transfer. This is the problem which the study investigated taking in the study District as a case study. A case study method was adopted in which Wolayta Sodo Zuria Woreda (District) was chosen to facilitate the ease of data collection. Respondents were selected through a simple random sampling technique to gather data from the farmers using structured questionnaires from a total of 50 respondents of which 25 were extension service users and 25 were non-users purposively. It was also revealed that the complete survey of the study was administered on 50 respondents for the major data collection through questionnaire. To strengthen the study personal observation was also employed and then the respondents were selected by using both purposive and simple random sampling techniques from the list available at each local office. In addition to this there were 10 Development Agents, 6 woreda agriculture office experts and 5 local administrative councils. The data analysis method was qualitative approach. Recommendations were made to help provide solutions to the challenges of extension services provision in the country. Some of these include disseminating technology to farmers in manageable groups of a maximum of twenty, increasing logistical and motivating.