Abstract

The study was conducted to evaluate farmers’ response to extension services on ginger production in Kagarko local government area of Kaduna State. One hundred and ten respondents were randomly selected for the study. Only 2.7% of the respondents pointed out that extension worker visited them monthly while 72.7% claimed they had never seen the extension agents on their farm. Only 9.1% of the respondents adopted improved cutting and none of them adopted any improved processing technique. However, 90.0% of the respondents used fertilizer and 100% mulched ginger even though information was not given on them by extension workers. There was a significant (p < 0.05) relationship between frequency of extension agent’s contact with the farmers and the farmers response to extension services on ginger production (χ² = 84.672). Extension contact was discovered to be very low in the area. Two major problems identified by the respondents were finance and marketing problems. Hence, extension services in the area needs improvement and the farmers need loan support to increase the scale of their production.

Key words: Ginger, extension contact, improved cutting, mulching, fertilizer, yield.