**3.1 Fear of the unknown**

The adoption of any new farming technology is often received by farmers with a lot of skeptism because of fear of the implications of the new technology on the productivity of their crops. Thus, adoption of such technologies is often slow until when fully convinced of its advantages over the traditional systems. Experience has shown that the transition from conventional agriculture to nature farming or organic farming can involve certain risks, such as initial lower yields and increased pest problems (James, 1994). However, once the transition period is over, which might take several years, most farmers find their new farming systems to be stable, productive, manageable, and profitable. In this case, the use of organic wastes will be beneficial through abundance of beneficial micro-organisms (characteristic of organically amended soils) which can fix atmospheric nitrogen, decompose organic wastes and residues, detoxify pesticides, suppress plant diseases and soil-borne pathogens, enhance nutrient cycling and produce bioactive compounds such as vitamins hormones and enzymes that stimulate plant growth (Higa, 1995). Besides, amendments may increase soil populations of micro-organisms antagonistic to nematodes, but are also known to release several toxic compounds during their decomposition in soil that act directly by poisoning the phyto-parasitic nematodes (Oka and Pivonia, 2002).

### **3.2 Dosage/Application rate**

The quantities of organic wastes usually required per unit area are large.This poses problems of acquisition transportation and application particularly in large scale farms. Fortunately, in Nigeria and other developing countries, these wastes are in abundance. Large quantities of refuse dump sites, rice and other cereal straws, industrial wastes such as saw dust, rice husk, by-products of breweries, agro-processing plants etc abound. Concerted efforts by governments, organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), research centers etc. are needed to mobilize these resources for use either directly or transformed into other products that can be utilized more easily by the farmers. In Taiwan for instance, fertilizers and organic wastes have been transformed into different products that are used to control plant diseases including nematodes (Huang and Huang, 1993; Huang and Kuhlman, 1991; Huang *et al*., 2003).
