Abstract

Cultivation of improved varieties is one way of increasing productivity of many crops especially in developing countries where there is pressure of land due to high population growth. Adoption studies have proved to be helpful in giving the picture of the performance of technologies amongst users like farmers and in line with this the study was carried out to assess the factors that influence a farmer to adopt improved soybean varieties using cross-sectional data that was collected from 300 households by International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in 2009. The study used a Hurdle Poisson model in order to effectively assess the socio-economic and demographic characteristics that influence farmers to adopt improved soybean varieties. The results of the study show that amongst the household socio-economic characteristics that were included in the model, age of the household head and farm size were significant at 5 percent level of significance whilst access to information through extension agents and distance to the market were the institutional factors that significantly influence a farmer. The results further show that the variety characteristics that were significant in influencing adoption of improved soybean varieties included high yield, early maturity and taste. Results of the decision on how many soybean varieties individual farmer choses to grow shows that age of the household head, access to information and varieties that are high yielding had a significant influence. The study recommends that there is a need to conduct adoption studies regularly in order to have a clear picture of the performance of many varieties developed by research institutions as they provide feedback to a number of players in the breeding program. Another policy recommendation is that there is a need to strengthen the extension services as they have proved to be the reliable source of information in the rural areas.

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School	: School of Law, Economics and Government
Issued Date	: 2012

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