Abstract

Soyabean has been nicknamed “the poor man’s meat” because it contains 40.3% protein, 20% oil and 91.9% total digestible nutrient. This study assessed farmers’ awareness, knowledge of preparation and rate of utilization of selected soyabean products. Multistage sampling method was employed to select a sample of 137 farm-families who responded to a 45-item structured interview schedule used for data collection. Data were subjected to descriptive statistical analyses. Among others, it was found that between 73.7 and 93.4% of the farmers are aware of the various selected soyabean products. Friends and neigbours are farmers’ most important sources of information about soyabean, followed by television/radio while extension agents ranked third. Between 42.3 and 70.1% of the farmers know how to prepare soya flour, soya milk, soya moinmoin and soya vegetable soup but majority do not possess adequate knowledge for preparing soya meat, soya snacks and soya candies. About 32.9% of infants/children and 61.3% of pregnant women/lactating mothers were utilizing soyabean products at a very low rate of “once a week”. It was concluded that majority of the farmers are utilizing soyabean at a lower than adequate rate. It was recommended that more extension efforts be focused on creating awareness of the nutritional values of soyabean and dissemination of preparation technologies for products that most farmers do not know how to prepare. Pregnant women/lactating mothers and infants/children (who are more vulnerable to protein-deficiency diseases) should be persuaded to increase their frequency of utilizing soyabean products.

Key words: Soyabean products, farm-families, utilization, protein, nutritional deficiency diseases, Abia State, Nigeria.