Assessment of Training Needs in Agro-chemical Use among Farmers in Bali Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria

Agro-chemicals though beneficial to farmers, could be harmful to the users and the environment. To safely explore the benefits of agrochemicals use it was imperative to assess the level of training needs on save use of agro-chemicals among farmers in Bali Local Government Area, Taraba state. The specific objective were to: describe the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondent, ascertain respondents training needs in safe use of agrochemicals, identified respondents source of information on safe use of agrochemicals and identify the constraints encountered by the respondents in the use of agrochemicals. One hundred fifty six (156) questionnaires were administered to the respondents selected through multi- stage random sampling and snowball. Mean, percentages and logit regression were used to analyse the data. The surveys revealed 58.33% of the respondents were within the mean 25 years. Majority of the respondents (76.92%) were males, and 80.13% were married, with 67.52 of them having acquired one form of formal education or the other. The mean household size, farm size and years of farming experience were 6people, 3hectares and 11years respectively. Most of respondents’ (74.36) source of fund through personal savings, greater percentage of them (47.44%) inherited their farm lands. Also majority of the respondents were aware of the safety measures on the use of agro-chemicals 100% of the respondents were in training needs in the safe use of agro-chemicals. Furthermore, 75.64% have their source of information through neighbors. A positive significant relationship existed between training needs and age (r = 0.0495), marital status (r = 0.6279) household size (r = 0.0153), education (r = 0.0267), family size (r = 0.0183) and farming experience (r = 0.0121). It is recommended that farmers need to be subjected to training in the safe and profitable use of agro-chemicals in Bali Local government area of Taraba state.