TECHNOLOGY TRAINING NEEDS OF WOMEN FARMERS FOR ENHANCING VALUE CHANGE IN MARKETING OF FARM PRODUCTS IN ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Women farmers in agrarian communities of Enugu State could not market their farm products profitably because they could not involve electronic technology. Whatever they produced are sold to consumer intermediaries at the farm gate. Some are sold to open market in small bites at low cost hence they remain poor. This poverty lingers on because those women farmers could not involve technologies in the sale of their products beyond their communities and among competing producers been exploited by middlemen. If technology is involved in the marketing of their products their goods will extend inform of exports to other states and beyond with higher value claim; but to obtain the change in their profits margin they require training in the use of technology in marketing their farm products. This study, therefore, focused on the identification of technology training needs of women farmers in the use of cell phone, computer, and internet for enhancing profit for marketing their farm products. Four research questions guided the study while four hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted action group design supported by the function of the industry model. The population of the study was 80 composed of 33 high tech (electronic) bankers, 14 Lecturers of Business Education and 33 Lecturers of Computer Science. Cluster sampling was involved in selecting Uzo-Uwani, Igbo Etiti and Nsukka Local Government Areas for the study in Nsukka Agricultural Zone of Enugu State while purposive sampling technique was used to select the respondents with certain criteria involving those that are relevant to the study among the population. The instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire developed from the literature and function of the industry. Three experts validated the instrument: one from the Department of Computer Science, one from the bank and another one from the Department of Measurement and Evaluation competent in instrument development or assessment while Cronbach alpha reliability method was used to ascertain the internal consistency of the questionnaire items and coefficient of 0.82 was obtained. Weighted mean was used to answer the research questions; standard deviation was used to determine the spread of the respondents from the mean and one another in their responses; analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis of no significant difference at 0.05 level of significance. The study found out that 16 items on the essential basic knowledge, 22 items on the computer/electronic operation, 17 items on the e-marketing and 21 items on the training procedure were found needed for training the women farmers. The study found out that there was no significant difference in the mean ratings of essential basic knowledge, computer operation, e-marketing and training procedure of the three groups of the respondents on the items. It is therefore recommended that the identified items in essential knowledge and skills, mobile phone operation, e-marketing (advertising, bargaining and supply), and training procedures should be involved in training the women farmers in the marketing of farm products for higher value claim while the trainers should use the identified procedures with the support facilities from affected Local Governments for the same purpose.

JEL: M30; M31; Q12; Q13