Professional Skills Needed by Secondary School Graduate in Groundnut Production

Abstract

Groundnut production is one of the most farming business in Kogi State, because of its economic value which includes; rich in protein and essential fatty acid, serves as cash and food crop, provision of nutritive bio-mass in form of green folder which can be use as livestock feeds, it serves as source of oil for industries and domestic use and the manufacturing of margarine and lubricant, many farmers and students embark on groundnut production because of this economic benefits. Due to this importance, groundnut is one of the crops taught to students in Secondary School as agricultural Science subject. Agricultural science is to impact necessary skills to the students to enable them enter into groundnut production after their graduation. That is while the study was carried out to identify the professional skills required by secondary school graduate in groundnut production. The study adopted survey research design and the population for the study was one hundred and fifty (150) agricultural teachers and farmers. one hundred (100) items structured questionnaire develop from the literature reviewed was used to collect data from the respondents. The data was analyze using weighted mean and standard deviation. The findings of the study revealed that 44 items are skills required by Secondary School Graduate in groundnut production in the study area. The study recommended that the identify skills should be acquiring by the teachers of agriculture, and Government should provide skills acquisition centre for training secondary school graduates, to make them competent in groundnut production and self-employed.