RELEVANCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF FARMER TRAINING CENTERS (FTCs) BASED TRAINING IN GUREWA DISTRICT, EAST HARARGHE ZONE, OROMIA REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA.

Abstract

Agriculture is the backbone of Ethiopia country economic development strategy and the main source of livelihood in terms of employment, generating foreign currency and raw materials for industries. Farmer Training Centers (FTCs) was established as a means to develop human resource and enhance innovation needed to transform the sector to productive and market oriented system. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the relevance and effectiveness of FTCs in Gurawa woreda in terms of changes in knowledge, attitude and practical levels, and explore institutional linkages with of the FTCs. This study used cross-sectional survey method to obtain the necessary data in 2018/19 production season. The data was obtained from 120 (60 trained and 60 untrained) randomly selected respondents from 4 kebeles using probability proportion to size sampling method. In addition, KII, FGD, and review of available record at FTCs were used for data collection. Relevance of FTCs were obtained based on the identifications of farmers’ needs and constraints, content of training, training delivery methods, selection criteria of trainees and appropriateness of period, duration and schedules of trainings were vary among the sampled in the area. Effectiveness of FTCs were identified based on the obtained result of knowledge, attitude and practical assessment of trained and untrained farmers, their mean difference of trained farmers towards the given technologies and commodities were significantly higher than untrained farmers at 1%, 1%, and 5% (p=0.01,0.01 and 0.05) of probability level respectively. According to the linkage mechanisms, the public, private and NGOs was identified as a key actors for institutional linkages which are weak in the functioning of FTCs based training.