Youth Corp Members' Perception of Agripreneurship in Oyo and Osun State

The paper examined the perception of NYSC members in Oyo and Osun States towards involvement in agricultural entrepreneurship. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 185 serving corps members that belong to agro-allied Skill Acquisition Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) group from two Local Governments Areas (LGAs) each from the selected States. Quantitative data were collected on the respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics; major agricultural enterprises they were involved in and the agripreneurial characteristics they possessed using semi structured questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive (frequency counts, percentages, means and standard deviation) and Inferential (Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Chi-square) statistics. Results showed that respondents had a mean age of 26 years, 85.4%were single and 75.7% were not graduates of agriculture. Commitment (̅= 3.50), innovativeness (̅= 3.47), initiative (̅= 3.45)and creativity (̅= 3.39) were the major agripreneurial characteristics possessed by the respondents. Respondents were involved in different agricultural enterprises of their choices namely poultry (7.6%), crop farming (6.5%), fish farming (6.5 %), vegetable farming (5.9%), Snail farming (1.1 %).Most(61.1%) of the respondents had a positive perception about youth involvement in agricultural entrepreneurship. Further result showed that that there was no significant relationship between the respondents’ perception towards involvement in agripreneurship and their age, household size, years of practical agricultural experience, cosmopoliteness and income. Majority (61.1%) of the respondents had a positive perception about youth involvement in agricultural entrepreneurship. It was concluded from the study that majority of the corps members in the study areas were favourably disposed towards involvement in agricultural entrepreneurship. Based on the findings, it is therefore recommended that any agricultural entrepreneurship programme for corps members should focus on all agricultural enterprises to further boost their potentials in being successful agripreneurs. Corps members should be availed the opportunity of agricultural entrepreneurship training programme with a view to further enhancing their agripreneurial characteristics