Sustaining the Growth and Development of Agricultural Cooperative Societies Through Training for Sustainable Agricultural Development in the Sub-Sahara Africa

Abstract

The paper investigated the sustainability, growth and development of agricultural cooperative societies through training for sustainable agricultural development in the sub-Sahara Africa. It examined many existing and newly emergent problems due to lack of education/training leading to the failure and collapse of agricultural cooperative societies’ in Nigeria and the Sub-Sahara Africa, a few years after establishment. The paper sought to explain some salient issues related to cooperative education/training relevant to the success and sustaining of agricultural cooperative societies. The focus was on education and training of agricultural cooperatives. The paper accentuates the need for education/training as a fundamental pillar for sustaining the growth and development of agricultural cooperative societies in Nigeria and the Sub-Sahara Africa. To achieve the objectives of the study, six rice farmers’ cooperatives in Bansara community were used to determine the relevance and relationship of training farmers to farmers’ productivity. The study adopted an expost facto research design with a stratified and purposive sampling technique used to select a total of six farmers’ cooperatives in the study area. Data were collected from the rice farmers’ field work report and were analyzed using simple percentage analyzes. At the end of the harvesting season the farmers’ production shows that farmers’ cooperatives that received training had a higher production output than farmers’ cooperatives that were not trained. This implies that training is necessary to increase and sustain farmers production output. The results also implied that training of farmers influence farmers’ productivity. Based on the findings and conclusions of the study, it was recommended that periodic training should be organized for cooperators in order to help them acquire skills, knowledge, and competences that are required for maximum farm

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