Information and training needs of farmer’s cooperatives societies on the use of social media for information dissemination in Anambra State, Nigeria. (The case of Awka South Local Government Area)

Abstract

The study examined the information and training needs of cooperative farmer’s cooperative societies on the use of social media for information dissemination in Anambra state. Specifically, the farmer’s socioeconomic characteristics, their information needs on social media, and their training needs on the use of social media were examined. Multi-stage sampling process was used to select 126 respondents sampled with the use of questionnaire and analyzed using frequency mean percentage, Chi-square and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation. The farmers were more female (54.7%), married (65.1%), and had formal education (77.8%) with a mean age of 44 years.  Majority of respondents very often seek information on credit facilities, sources, terms & conditions (mean = 4.62, S.D = 0.11); market trends, price, and stocks available (mean = 4.54, S.D = 0.18); educational & training information (mean = 4.42, S.D = 0.25); seed variety, source and availability (mean = 4.40, S.D = 0.21). Top needed areas of training by the farmers were placing advertisements on Facebook, (81.8%), Twitter (88.1%), Instagram (73.0%), creating groups and sending broadcast messages on WhatsApp, and creating channels on YouTube (86.50%). A significant relationship existed between the farmer’s age (Chi-square = 34.519; p < 0.05), marital status (Chi-square = 1.892; p < 0.05), education (Chi-square = 13.362; p < 0.05), and training needs. Also a significant relationship between training needs and the information needs of the farmers with r = .625, r2 = 0.401452, percentage (%) = 40.1, N = 126, and p-value = .000. It concluded that the farmers need training on the use of the various social media platforms. However, their training needs is influenced by their needs for certain agricultural information needs, their age, marital status and education. Therefore, extension service providers should target cooperative farmers in the study area to build their capacity on the use of social media