Abstract
Given the soap opera’s potential to engender behaviour learning and meet the information needs of farmers, this paper sought to establish farmers’ propensity to use soap opera for sourcing agricultural information in Southwest Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to draw representative samples (150 farmers) in this study. Using interview schedule, data were elicited on farmers’ personal characteristics, awareness about the use of soap opera, perceived benefits of soap opera and proclivity to use it for sourcing agricultural information. Data were analysed using descriptive (frequencies, percentages, means) and inferential (Chi-square and PPMC) statistics at P = 0.05. Farmers’ age, years of schooling and household size were 52.1 ± 11.4 years, 10.5 ± 4.6 years and 5.9 ± 2.4 persons, respectively. Majority of the farmers (86.0%) had heard about soap opera and 76.0% heard of different soaps in the last couple of years and more than half (53.3%) had heard of different soaps from both radio and television. However, 90.7% did not know any kind of soap opera that was used to promote agriculture. More than half of the farmers (56.7%) had high inclination for sourcing agricultural information using soap opera. There was a significant correlation between farmers’ perceived benefits (r = 0.36; P = 0.00) and proclivity to use soap opera for sourcing agricultural information. Farmers’ positive proclivity to use soap implies that soap opera strategy has potentials to benefit farmers as a source of agricultural information; therefore, soap opera should be considered as veritable avenue for agricultural information dissemination in Southwest Nigeria.