DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2014.v02i01.008

Pages: 37-44

Sustainable Tree Crop Programme (STCP) of International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) introduced Farmer Field School (FFS) in 2003 as pilot project. In 2005, FFS was scaled up and adopted by cocoa producing states in Nigeria to train cocoa farmers on Integrated Crop and Pest Management (ICPM). The study investigated effects of FFS training on cocoa farmers’ job performance in South Western Nigeria. Two cocoa producing states namely Ondo and Cross River States were purposively selected, 20% of cocoa producing Local Government Areas (LGAs) were selected using simple randomly sampling technique to give 2 LGAs for Cross River and 3LGAs from Ondo State. One FFS community was selected in each LGA to obtain 5 FFS communities. In the five communities, there are 30 FFS participants per LGA this give total of 150 participants. Majority (83.8%) were male, many (60.8%), had cocoa farm size of 1-5ha, On CFJP, respondents reported to have recorded improvement in their job performance in nursery establishment (77.7%), rational pesticide use (72.3%), farm hygiene practices (83.8%), cocoa fermentation (68.7%), cocoa harvesting (76.2%), cocoa pruning (88.5%), cocoa storage (76.9%), sourcing for improved materials (43.1%), training/workshop attendance (19.2%). Inferential statistics shows that age (r = 0.23, p = 0.01), farm size (r = 0.34, p = 0.04), income from cocoa (r = 0.43, p = 0.02) educational status and (χ2= 13.8, p = 0.01) show significant relationships with the level of improvement of job performance. The study concluded that FFS has had positive effects on cocoa farmers’ job performance.