Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 17 ISSUE 4
Written by Solomon Adedapo ADESOJI, Oluwafunmilola Olawunmi OLAYODE, Aminat Olajumoke OGUNDEJI

The study assessed the level of awareness and determined the level of participation of fish farmers in Agricultural Insurance Scheme (AIS) with a view to improving on the level of awareness and consequently participation. The study adopted the survey method of research. The study population comprised all the 1,728 registered fish farmers in Ondo State. Only 295 respondents were sampled from the population using the Raosoft sample size calculator. Multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted to distribute the sample population among the Local Government Areas (LGAs). Two Local Governments Areas (LGAs) were purposively selected from each of the four zones based on the prominence in fish farming. Second stage involved random selection of two communities each from the selected LGAs. At the last stage, fish farmers register was used to proportionately distribute the farmers to LGAs. The results showed the mean age of fish farmers to be 44.6±10.1years and majority (83.4) were married. The mean household size was 5±2 and about 96% was able to read and write. The mean years of fish farming experience was 13.54±11.9 and all of them were smallholders. About 70.5% were aware of AIS but only 15% were under fish policy cover for the last five years. Majority (82.3%) had moderate participation level with only 4.4% with high level of participation. There was strong correlation (R = 0.759) between the variables investigated and level of participation. Also three variables age, contact with extension and awareness regressed positively while number of information sources and household size regressed negatively with level of participation. It was concluded that despite the high level of awareness, level of participation was low

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