DOI: 10.36347/sjavs.2016.v03i01.015

Pages: 79-84

Given the paradigm shift in agricultural development from “development approach” to “business approach” in Nigeria, this paper assesses the skills/competences of Nigeria’s arable farmers to cope with the anticipated new policy environment in terms of skills and competences requirements and the performance improvement potential of the farmers using Delta State, Nigeria as a case study. Data on perception of the importance of items of skills and competences and farmers’ self-rating of expertise in the application of these items of skills and competences were elicited from farmers on a 5-point likert type scale using copies of a structured questionnaire. A total of 126 arable farmers were drawn from the three agricultural zones in the state using multi-stage sampling procedure. Data were analyzed using frequency counts, mean and mode. Among the findings was that: farmers were poor in the use of internet facilities, in networking and in exploiting the benefits inherent in social capital; they have poor perception of the importance of managing finances and accounting. They, however, rated their skills and competences in the application of local technology “fairly”. A skill gap of 1.01 which was significant at alpha equal 1% was established. Performance improvement potential was over five times. This indicates a wide range of skills and competences among the farmers which needed to be narrowed by way of capacity building to facilitate farmers’ efficiency given the state of the art in agricultural production in Nigeria.